


Alec, Interrupted

by oncethrown



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, After season 1, Bad Parent Maryse Lightwood, Fluff and Fun, Institute Doors Don't Lock Headcannon, It's Hard and Nobody Understands, M/M, Nosy Isabelle, Poor Alec, Suggestive Bananas, Sweet Magnus, Virgin Alec
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-07-26 03:07:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncethrown/pseuds/oncethrown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard enough to start a relationship. </p><p>It's significantly harder to start a relationship with the High Warlock of Brooklyn, during the beginning of an all out war in the Shadow world.</p><p>5 sexy times that get interrupted, and one that doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Are you really going to wear that?” Isabelle asked. 

“Yup,” Alec replied, without so much as looking down. All his clothes were basically the same. Black boots, black pants, black shirt, black jacket. This is what he looked like. Magnus wouldn’t take him somewhere on a first date where he would need other clothes. Not without warning, and maybe some sort of sketch, delivered to Isabelle, with an envelope full of cash attached to it. Where ever they were going, Alec was completely confident that he could wear this. 

“Well. I suppose that’s fine then,” said Izzy. She pursed her lips, looking him over with evident disapproval as she sheathed her seraph blade on her belt.

Clary skidded to a stop behind Isabelle, tucking two steles into her jacket pocket. She grinned up at Alec. “Sorry, I thought I should grab a spare stele after what happened on Saturday.” Her grin grew wider. “Let’s go on patrol.”

Her tone all but put air quotes around the words ‘on patrol’ but Alec decided it was best to just not engage. He turned around without a word and headed out the Institute’s front door.

He missed Jace. Not just because unspeakable things might be happening to him, or because no one knew Valentine like Jace did and he was their best asset in pursuing Valentine, but because without Jace, Alec had to enlist Izzy and Clary whenever he needed help with anything at the Institute.

And they were all just so… enthusiastic about helping him. 

With everything going on at the Institute— the Inquisitor and the Consul back to question everyone, Jace still missing, relations with the Seelies all but completely shot, and Alec’s parents occasionally ambushing him and begging him to reconsider a suitable marriage— the first date Alec owed Magnus kept getting bumped back over and over again. The wedding ceremony, Hodge’s betrayal, and Jace’s abduction had only been two weeks ago. In that two weeks, Alec had wound up canceling plans with Magnus four times. 

Most of that was because of his mother. Lydia was still at least a week away from being cleared for duty, and somehow, Maryse had been granted control of the Institute again. She’d been going out of her way to fill Alec’s schedule, and switch things on him at the last moment, suddenly snatching away his free nights and making them into free afternoons, or promising that she would make it up to him with more time off in the future. Her real aim— keeping Alec away from Magnus— was transparent to everyone. Including Magnus. 

Magnus had been aggravatingly understanding, but clearly disappointed every time Alec had canceled. He’d said all the right things about how intense things must be at the Institute, and about how of course it would be difficult for Alec to think about dating when his parabatai had been kidnapped by Valentine. He even managed to be annoyed with Maryse in a diplomatic way.

Of course, Magnus’s patience and understanding just made Alec want to see him more. 

So now here he was. Walking to the nearest subway station with Clary and Isabelle, both of whom had agreed not only to lie for him, but to work together to split his patrol duties between themselves so that he could take the night off and still be assured that a swath of Manhattan wasn’t being left in danger just so he could have a nice dinner with a handsome man. And a good kisser. 

Alec was very grateful.

“So,” Clary said, spinning her stele in her fingers the same way Jace did. “Us helping you get out of patrolling tonight means that you’re going to owe us details about this date. You realize that right?”

But not quite that grateful.

Isabelle laughed. “My brother’s a steel trap. It’s going to take more than a few favors to get him to talk to us about his boyfriend.”

“Unless you’re such a voyeur the only reason you agreed to help me was to demand prurient details,” Alec huffed, turning a hard look on Clary. Mostly Alec just wanted to move away from the word boyfriend. He and Magnus didn’t have a word yet, and Alec hadn’t asked him for one. They hadn’t even been out on a date yet. That was sort of the whole point of tonight. 

“What does prurient mean?” Clary asked. 

“Sexy,” Isabelle supplied as they turned toward the subway. 

Clary sighed and patted Alec’s elbow. “No. I agreed to help you because I thought we were kind of friends now.”

“Well. Don’t push your luck,”Alec replied. Clary just rolled her eyes at him.

“Where’s he taking you?” Isabelle asked. 

“An Ethiopian place on 44th?”

“That’s an interesting first date,” Clary said. 

“Why?”

The redhead shrugged. “Oh, it’s just… you know.”

“I don’t know,” Alec replied. 

“Magnus is fancy,” Clary said with a shrug. “And like… rich. I would have thought he’d take you to an upscale Italian place. Or French. Maybe Japanese.”

“Not wearing that,” Isabelle countered. 

Mercifully, they reached the subway. With a “Thanks,” to Izzy and a nod to Clary, Alec hopped down the steps and got on a train to Brooklyn. 

***

Dating. 

Dating, Alec thought to himself. 

He liked the sound of it. He and Magnus were dating. He and Magnus had just gone on a date. 

If he’d known that this— this happy, light feeling suffusing his body— was what he was giving up, by trying to be the perfect shadowhunter, he would have come out years ago. He wasn’t sure how to admit this to Magnus, but Alec was also incredibly, indescribably relieved. Some part of him had spent the last two weeks worrying that they would go out and have a miserable time. As much as he’d felt drawn to Magnus before what had happened at the wedding, and even given the little fantasies he’d entertained about what it might have been like to go and get that drink with Magnus before Lydia had come into town, part have him had been worried ever since they’d kissed. 

He knew that his parents were just trying to talk him out of seeing Magnus when they’d said all those things about Magnus being experienced, but that didn’t mean Alec hadn’t been worrying about how fundamentally different they were. Magnus was a warlock. He was immortal. He was part demon. The Clave had evidence that he was at least three hundred years old, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be older. He’d lived all over the world and had relationships significantly longer than Alec’s expected life span. 

And Alec didn’t even know what Magnus saw in him.

But the awkward part of the evening had passed quickly and the everything had been so easy. They’d exchanged stories about demon hunting and common experiences in the shadow world. They’d ordered food and tried things off each other’s plates. Alec had told a terrible story about a demon hunt he, Jace, and Izzy had gone on. He’d gotten all of the good parts mixed up and told it completely out of order so that it was just nowhere near as good as when Jace or Izzy told it, but Magnus had laughed anyway. 

The longer they were together, the more relaxed Alec felt. He laughed. He had a second drink. He let Magnus move his foot against his own under the table. 

He had fun. 

“This was a lovely evening,” Magnus said, as they stepped out of the restaurant and into the crisp evening air. He spun on his heels, fixing a wide smile on Alec. 

“Yeah, it was,” Alec said pulling his boy and quiver up over his shoulder. He’d left it, glamoured, by the side of the booth for the whole date. The couple times he’d caught it out of the corner of his eye, it had given him a bit of a weird thrill. He was out breaking the rules, and for some reason, it was more fun than he ever could have expected. “I umm… I really want to do this again sometime.”

Magnus’s grin somehow got wider. “I would love that.” Something about his grin grew just a little bit hesitant. “Would you like to keep this evening going a little longer?”

Alec wasn’t sure what Magnus was asking, and it must have shown on his face. 

“Would you like to go back to my la— loft. For a night cap?” Magnus asked. 

Alec swallowed. He’d stayed at Magnus’s place for a drink before. But everything was different now. And… tonight had been so great, but all so new. He knew Magnus wasn’t asking him for more than just a little more time together… and part of him was more than willing to try a whole host of new things with Magnus tonight, most of which would best be experienced on Magnus’s extremely comfortable couch.

But…

“I’m,” Alec started, then bit his lip. 

But what? He had to go pick up a patrol from Clary and Izzy? He didn’t. They’d promised they had it covered and even with everything going on with Valentine, there really hadn’t been any noticeable increases in demon activity. And he couldn’t go back to the Institute for at least another three hours and still have it look like he’d actually gone out on patrol.

And he wanted to go. 

“Yeah. I would like that,” Alec said. Magnus brightened, and waved to an alleyway. About halfway down the alleyway, Magnus held out a hand to stop Alec, and waved his arms like a windmill, until a large purple square grew against the wall in front of them. Magnus reached out for Alec’s hand, which Alec let him take. 

Magnus’s hands were callused, and Alec wasn’t sure why he was surprised, but he didn’t have much time to think about it before he was following Magnus into the whirl of the portal. 

***

The portal deposited them inside the entrance of Magnus’s building, still holding hands. Magnus tugged at Alec’s arm and started to lead him to the elevator.

“So… does anyone ever catch you just… portalling into a public hallway like that?” Alec asked as the elevator doors closed behind them. 

“Of course not,” Magnus scoffed. “That sort of recklessness is entirely against the accords, and would be considered criminal.”

Magnus turned an uninterpretable look on Alec. Alec wasn’t sure if he was being teased, or not. But then he realized that he and Magnus were alone. Alone, in private, together, since the first time since Alec had stayed behind after helping to heal Luke. 

Magnus seemed to realize it too, and when his eyes strayed down to Alec’s lips, Alec couldn’t help himself. 

He lowered himself down just the little bit he needed to press his lips to Magnus’s, and found Magnus already meeting him halfway. 

It was a different kiss than it had been in the church. Instead of being deafened by the blood rushing in his ears, Alec could hear Magnus’s breathing, getting shorter and shorter. All the baggage and intensity of the first kiss was gone too. This was just him… choosing to kiss Magnus because he could. 

Letting Magnus crowd him back against the elevator wall because he could. Wrapping his arm around Magnus’s waist and pulling him close, pressing himself to Magnus’s hips, just because he could. 

Breaking apart gasping for air and diving right back in, even as the elevator door dinged open. 

“Alec! Alec!” 

There was a loud, resounding knock and then. 

“Oh! Sorry!”

Alec pulled back reluctantly. The first voice had been Isabelle. The second Clary. 

The two girls were standing in the hallway. Isabelle had a large, but healing, cut up her arm. There was black ichor in Clary’s fiery hair. 

“You weren’t answering your phone!” Isabelle accused. “There’s a situation in the park. We did what we could without calling into the clave, but we need your help.”

Magnus pulled away from him with a disappointed sigh, which Alec couldn’t help but echo. Isabelle fixed Alec with an apologetic, but unmoving look and Magnus stuck his arm out, holding the elevator door open. 

“Duty calls, I see,” he said. “We’ll have to take a rain check. Call me when you get back to the Institute. I’d like to know that you’re okay.”

Alec nodded at Magnus, who stepped out of the elevator, making room for Isabelle and Clary to duck in. 

Alec watched Magnus walk into his apartment until the elevator doors shut with an obnoxiously cheery “ding.”

“So,” Isabelle said, her worry turning to amusement with annoying speed. “Pretty good first date, huh?”


	2. Chapter 2

Alec measured out three tablespoons of coffee grounds, rubbed his eye, yawned and, after a moment of dithering, added a fourth spoon. Then another half-full tablespoon. 

 

Anyone who didn’t like it could just water theirs down. 

 

He fixed himself a bowl of yogurt and granola while the coffee pot gurgled, and was settling down at the kitchen table with his breakfast when Izzy walked into the kitchen.

 

“Morning,” He told her. She responded with a wave, flicking her hand up at him without pausing on her way to the coffee pot. After a quick flurry of activity with the mugs and fridge and sugar bowl, she came to sit down across from Alec.  Her eyes widened as she took a gulp from her mug. 

 

“Did you make this?” She asked. 

 

“Yup.”

 

“This could wake the dead.”

 

“I’m tired.”

 

Isabelle yawned sympathetically and took another gulp from her mug. “Why in the hell would mom make us do an Institute debrief at this ungodly hour?”

 

Alec gave Isabelle a look. “You’re kidding. You really haven’t figured that out?”

 

Isabelle squinted at Alec and took another gulp from her mug. “Oh. Shit.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

As soon as Lydia had been cleared to, she’d taken the New York Institute back over, with the blessing of the Clave. Which wasn’t surprising, considering that none of the Lightwoods had even suspected that Hodge was working for Valentine, and it looked pretty bad when former Circle members didn’t realize that a former friend was working with their former terrorist leader. The very first thing Lydia had done was bawl Maryse out in front of the entire Institute for the way she was scheduling patrols. Lydia had pointed out that by making everyone’s schedules undependable and overpacked, she was wearing out her entire staff and putting everyone at risk. 

 

Maryse had been taken off scheduling, which Lydia was now running herself, and been put in charge of scheduling mission debriefs. It had taken her less than a week to figure out how to use that power to try and stop Alec and Magnus from seeing each other. She had divided the Institute shadowhunters into three teams, all of whom reported all of their activity at bi-weekly team meeting. Alec and Isabelle had been assigned to the early morning team. So now, about half the time Alec had a free evening and decided to spend it with Magnus, he had to drag himself out of bed for a crack of dawn debrief meeting. 

 

“You could tell Lydia what Mom is doing,” Isabelle said. 

 

“No,” Alec replied. “I’m sure someone else will go to her first. Besides, this schedule is a waste of Mom’s time too. She’ll give up on it,” he finished with a yawn.

 

Isabelle echoed it. “When did you get in last night?”

 

Even now, Alec’s first instinct is to just lie to her. Even though she knows as much about his relationship with Magnus as anyone does. But Alec’s life has split into two spheres. Magnus’s place and the Institute. And he doesn’t love it when the two spheres meet. 

 

Isabelle scoffed. “Come on. Even now, you and I can’t talk about your personal life? I’m the one who invited Magnus to the wedding you know. I don’t get to hear about anything?”

 

Alec tapped his spoon against a mound of yogurt and granola. “I didn’t get in late. Magnus portalled me here this morning,” he said, looking into his cereal for a moment before glancing up. 

 

Isabelle’s grin was best described as alarming. “So you were with him all night.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

 Alec met Isabelle’s expectant gaze and held it as he continued to drink coffee. 

 

“Why won’t you talk to me about this?” Isabelle asked. “I talk to you.” Isabelle’s entire face and body turn downward, suddenly, obviously sad.

 

Alec set his mug down. “Okay. Okay. You’re right.” He picked it back up, realizing that he needed something in his hands. “Yeah, I stayed at Magnus’s last night. I… I usually do, and he sends me back to the Institute in the morning.”

 

She lightened at this information, smirking at him. “Okay. And?”

 

“And what?”

 

“And _details_. Alec! I’m happy for you. I _want_ to talk to you about this. Okay? Just tell me about your stupid date already.”

 

“I… I don’t know what to say,” Alec admitted. “What do you want to know?” He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. Giving Isabelle permission to interrogate him about Magnus was clearly a horrible mistake, which was confirmed by the outright predatory way that she grinned at him. 

 

“Did you go out for dinner or order in?” she asked. 

 

Alex relaxed a little. He’d expected Isabelle to go for the jugular. “We went out for Italian and got tiramisu to take back to the loft.” Alec caught himself grinning, and he could tell from Isabelle’s expression she’d seen it too. 

 

“Classy,” she smiled at him over her coffee. “So you took the tiramisu back to his place and did what?”

 

“Had dessert. Listened to one of his records. Talked.”

 

Isabelle nodded. Waited, then sighed and rolled her eyes. “Did you have sex? Are you having sex?”

 

Ah. There it was. He didn’t want to get into this with Isabelle. At breakfast. Before a meeting with their mother. 

 

He wasn’t exactly winning out over that instinct to lie to his sister either. He was telling the truth, just out of order and not about everything.

 

Dinner had gotten warm and flirty. When the waiter came by to ask if they wanted dessert, Magnus had ordered it to go and handed the waiter his card. Alec had asked why and Magnus had given him a sly smile that the knew made Alec… distracted. 

 

“Because I love the tiramisu here, and I don’t want to rush through it,” Magnus had answered. 

 

“Why would you rush through it?” Alec had replied. 

 

“Because I can’t wait to touch you any longer.”

 

Magnus had portalled them from the restaurant bathroom, right onto the couch back in his loft, and already had Alec pressed back against the cushions under neath him before Alec’s head had stopped spinning from the portal magic. 

 

The dessert. The record. The talking. That had all happened, but not until after Alec had… not freaked out. _Freaked out_ wasn’t really the right description. 

 

Gotten intimidated. 

 

“By the Angel, Izzy,” Alec scoffed. 

 

“What?” Izzy huffs back. “It’s a reasonable question. You’ve been waiting for way too long. It’s not like he can knock you up, and warlocks don’t carry communicable disease. What could possibly be stopping you?”

 

“Don’t talk about him like he’s a specimen in your laboratory,” Alec told her. 

 

Her eyebrows moved together for a moment before her face went neutral again. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

 

“And it’s not… it’s only been six weeks. I’m… there’s nothing wrong with getting to know someone first.”

 

Isabelle shook her head and took a sip of her coffee. “You’re afraid you’re going to be bad at it.”

 

Alec balked. “What?”

 

She was completely right. Alec just didn’t want to admit it.

 

The thing was that shadowhunters trained. For hours and hours every day, starting at a very young age. Alec had spent months learning to draw runes on paper before he’d ever been allowed to rune himself. He’d been trained on every weapon in the Institute for years, and now, even though he’d chosen a bow as his specialty, he still had to maintain competence on everything. Hodge had taught them all dozens of fighting styles and ways to mix them.  

 

Everything Alec had ever been taught was something he’d had to drill over and over and over, hours a day, every day his entire life. 

 

The idea of being asked to do something so important with Magnus, without any practice, without any instruction, with absolutely no idea what he was doing, was terrifying. 

 

“I know you,” Isabelle said simply.  “Remember when we were all trying to break into the Hotel Dumort? We found a perfectly good cache of weapons. Plenty of swords to go around, but no. You had to sneak back into the Institute to get your bow, because you don’t think your sword technique is perfect.” She rolled her eyes. “News flash, big brother— Magnus likes you enough to let you practice on him.”

 

Alec sputtered a few times, while Isabelle watched him patiently over her coffee mug.

 

“Magnus is…”

 

“Crazy about you?” Izzy suggested. 

 

“He—“ Alec took a deep breath. It was too early in the morning to let himself get flustered about this. “Magnus is immortal. And he is used to dating people who… know what they are doing.”

 

Isabelle gave him a sad sort of smile. “You know, if it’s that big a deal to you, there are things you can do. Videos you could watch. Facsimiles you could purchase.”

 

Alec stared at her, waiting for her words to turn into meaning. 

 

She closed her eyes and sighed. If she had been anyone else she might have looked like she was praying. “Alec— stop being a weirdo and watch some porn.”

 

Alec felt all the blood in his body rush to his cheeks so fast it he was surprised they didn’t burst. “I… jesus… Izzy.”

 

Izzy shrugged. “What? I’m not saying it’s a perfect solution. But, you know. Just to give you ideas. You could look for something nice. They have like… romantic gay porn.

 

“Please stop talking about porn,” Alec said. “Please… never talk about porn again.”

 

Izzy stood up and carried her mug to the sink. “I’m not the practice-makes-perfect weirdo in this room.” She rinsed her mug. “It doesn’t have to be porn. You can google around until you find something that gives you, you know, a technique or some beginner’s suggestions to work with. And if you can’t just go to Magnus with that, you can find ways to practice.”

 

Alec caught a flash of movement as Isabelle spun quickly, flinging her arm outward and throwing something directly at his chest. 

 

Years of training and muscle memory let him catch it almost without thinking. 

 

It was a banana. 

 

Cackling, Isabelle left the kitchen. 

 

***

 

He’d eaten the banana. 

 

 His mother hadn’t spoken to him directly at the debriefing, other than to call him up to the front of the room to give his report. And then she’d glared at him when he mentioned that he was working with local warlocks to find a way to track Jace. There had been a couple sniggers in the crowd at that announcement, and then a yelp. One of the snigger-ers had been sitting next to Izzy and somehow wound up with a six inch high heel crushing his instep. 

 

And Alec had gone back to his seat and tried, and failed, to concentrate on the rest of the meeting. But every time he dragged his mind back to the speaker, it was dragged away again as he ran over his conversation with Izzy this morning and the discussion with Magnus last night. 

 

Part of it was that Magnus was older and more experienced. But that didn’t worry Alec in the way that his parents wanted him to worry about it. And it wasn’t like he thought Magnus would be anything less than patient and caring. Alec knew, logically, that he could let things move past naked kissing and… hand-stuff, and onto the next step, and that if he was truly, horrifically terrible at that next step, nothing bad would happen. In the worst case scenario, Magnus would chuckle and ask him to do something differently. What happened last night wouldn’t have been a big deal if Alec had just been able to talk about what he wanted and what he wasn’t quite ready for. Or if he was less confused about what he wanted and what he was ready for. 

 

Kissing Magnus was familiar. Letting Magnus press down into him was familiar. Undressing and touching and all of it had been good and familiar and exactly what Alec already knew he wanted. Until Magnus had started kissing lower and lower down Alec’s body. 

 

Slowly. Really, really slowly.

 

And that was the real problem. Magnus had given Alec every opportunity to stop him. All Alec would have had to do to stop Magnus was tap his shoulder and said _anything_. “Hey.” “Uh-uh.” “No.” Absolutely _any_ even partially negative sounding vocalization would have worked. But Alec hadn’t wanted to stop him. He always felt good with Magnus and Alec had been completely on board with Magnus wanting to try a new way of making him feel good. But the further down his body Magnus’s mouth moved, the more muddled everything had gotten. 

 

He wanted Magnus to blow him. But he’d feel obligated to return the favor. And part of him wanted to, but he also felt like he shouldn’t. And all of that had gotten mixed together with the feeling Alec couldn’t shake—that he’d fumbled and fallen at every stage with Magnus and didn’t want to do it again.

 

And so, instead of just asking Magnus to stop until Alec figured out what he really wanted, Alec had let the adrenaline and the desire and the worry and that lingering hint of shame spiral and build until he’d wound up grabbing Magnus by the hair and pulling him away, much too hard, just as Magnus’s lips had brushed over his cock.

 

It had turned into a weird, short discussion that mostly consisted of Alec apologizing and trying to convince Magnus they didn’t have to get dressed again.

 

So now, in addition to feeling like he needed a better idea of how to do more with Magnus, Alec felt like he had to be good enough at it to make up for how badly things had gone last night. 

 

And Izzy, damn her, had given him a decent starting point.

 

So now here Alec was. In his room. Standing next to his bed, trying to think of search terms to tap into his phone. 

 

He’d never watched porn. At first it had just seemed undignified, and then it had seemed like tempting fate. And now… it felt a little like _cheating_ to do more than just… watch a couple quick things for ideas. But that’s all he was doing. He wasn’t going to make a habit of it. He wasn’t even going to touch himself.

 

He was just going to look. 

 

Eventually, he typed in a couple keywords and scrolled through the list of options that came up, looking at the little thumbnails that advertised videos. 

 

There were _so.many.more_ than he could have ever expected. It was overwhelming. The idea that there were so many people who just… did this. In front of people. Professionally. Was also kind of overwhelming. 

 

After a minute or so of scrolling, Alec finally took a deep breath and tapped on a video, and tapped back out with a shiver when he heard what the two guys were actually saying to each other. He hurriedly scrolled through a section of videos where everyone seemed to be wearing gross costumes and being tortured in basements, and finally went back and added “romantic” as a keyword. Izzy had said those sorts of videos existed. 

 

A new list— full of thumbnails depicting much better lit rooms populated by much healthier looking men— came up. Alec resumed scrolling.

 

A knock at the door made him jump.

 

“Alec?”

 

Panicked, Alec threw his phone onto his bed and threw a pillow on top of it. 

 

“Come in!” he yelled. 

 

His door swung open, and Lydia stepped inside. She looked him up and down.

 

“What’s wrong with you?”

 

“What?” Alec demanded. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. 

 

“You just… you look weird,” Lydia said. “Are you alright?”

 

“I’m…” Alec cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’m sorry. It’s nothing. What can I help you with?”

 

Lydia gestured at his bed. “Do you mind if I sit down? I was out on late patrol last night and I’ve still got a couple hours to go before I can get my head down.”

 

Alec grit his teeth and looked down at his bed, making sure his phone was still hidden. “Go ahead.”

 

Lydia gratefully sank down onto the mattress. “I’m not going to beat around the bush here— I need you to come to me when your mother is harassing you.” 

 

“What?” Alec demanded.

 

“I’m the Head of this Institute. I understand that there are a handful of mixed allegiances and motivations at play here— but you are both under my command. The way she’s treating you is undermining my authority here, and creating toxicity in the ranks. I understand that you don’t want to be seen as demanding special treatment, but that’s not what—“

 

A loud, utterly unrestrained moan sounded out in Alec’s room. Lydia looked up at him in alarm until the moan was followed by a tinny voice growling, “You like that? You want more?” and another voice breathlessly answering, “yeah, suck me like that!”

 

Lydia turned to Alec’s pillows and slid her hand underneath them while Alec felt all of the blood draining out of his face. She pulled the phone out and glanced down at the screen. Alec watched her eyebrow lift. 

 

“It’s not… I’m not just…” Alec sputtered. “It’s recon!”

 

Lydia looked up at him and her face slowly turned up into a smile while the video continued to play. “Oh, Alec.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Alec said immediately. He wasn’t sure what exactly he was apologizing for, but it seemed like the only thing to say when your ex-fiance found you watching gay porn so you could reenact it on your boyfriend. 

 

Lydia glanced back down at the phone and shook her head. “I feel obligated to tell you that no one actually likes this. It’s really hard to do and there are approximately a thousand things that are more fun.”

 

Alec wondered if it was possible to die of embarrassment as Lydia paused the video and tossed the phone back onto his bed. “If you… I mean if you wanted to talk to me, we could do that. I mean… we almost got married. We’re sort of friends. And I’m sure this is not the sort of thing you want to talk to your sister about. And with Jace gone…”

 

Lydia shrugged and left the offer hanging there. 

 

“I…” Alec started. “It’s kind of a lot to start with, isn’t it?”

 

Lydia gestured at the phone again. “Deepthroating? Yeah, it’s way too much to start with.”

 

“No,” Alec stopped her before she said the word ‘deepthroating’ again. “I mean… yes. I would like us to be friends. Isn’t _this conversation_ a lot to start with?”

 

Lydia nodded. “I suppose. So tell you what— when you have time this week, come get me. Let’s go get coffee or something.” 

 

“Okay,” Alec agreed. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

 

Lydia smiled, then grabbed his phone off the bed again. “And, as your new friend, let me give you a little advice—“ she waved the phone screen— still displaying two skinny, naked, _occupied_ young men— “Watching this sort of thing can be recreational, sure. That’s your business, but don’t _learn_ from this. Talk to Magnus. I’m _very, very sure_ he isn’t shy about this sort of thing. “

 

“You’re not wrong,” Alec admitted. 

 

“Okay,” Lydia said with a smile. “Well. I’m gonna go. But let’s get coffee later?”

 

“Didn’t you come in here to yell at me?” Alec asked. 

 

Lydia looked surprised. “No?”

 

“Okay. That’s all you needed to say? I need to report to you about my mother?”

 

“Yeah. That was pretty much the gist,” Lydia sighed and sat up. She tapped Alec’s phone against his chest and, blushing, he took it from her. 

 

“Enjoy your afternoon,” she said, walking out his door with a chuckle.

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Outside the door to Magus’s loft, Alec took a moment to breathe. It had been a long two weeks full of unsettling reports from the Shadow world about Seelie politics, increasingly bizarre reports about Valentine’s actions, and most bitterly, no fewer than three leads on Jace’s whereabouts that had turned out to be no more than wild goose chases. 

 

It didn’t help anything that, during those two weeks, Alec hadn’t seen Magnus once.

 

Which made tonight weirdly intimidating. Alec felt a little like he was starting over with Magnus, but also like tonight had to be…special in some way. Like it somehow had to have more weight than the dates before it. 

 

Because, even though they hadn’t seen each other, they had talked every day. Ongoing text conversations some days, phone conversations before bed  other days. They’d talked about what things were like when Magnus moved back to New York in the seventies. Alec mentioned that he’d had a crush on Jace. He’d been evasive about things like how long that crush had lasted, or how intense it had been, or how recent it had been. He didn’t feel good about that but at this point? He’d offered a decent amount of information. His and Magnus’s relationship isn’t the old. Alec didn’t think he could be blamed for not feeling like he owed Magnus his entire life story. Especially considering how unequal the exchange of life stories was already sure to be. 

 

He’d also, after a lot of dithering, finally admitted to Magnus the entire, ridiculous, neurotic reason he was so worried about letting Magnus touch him. He’d done it behind the safety of text, but Magus had asked to call him. Alec had agreed, and Magnus had gently told him that it wasn’t something Alec needed to worry about, and they could talk about it the next time they saw each other. 

 

And, Alec couldn’t help thinking, here he was. 

 

He knocked on the door. It took a few moments for Magnus to answer, but Alec was amazed at the strange flush of relief through his body when he did. The feeling of being… off,  the starting over feeling, evaporated as soon as Magnus smiled at him. That was a smile Magnus had given him before. That was a smile he’d kissed before. 

 

“Alexander,” Magnus said, grinning just a little wider. “I’m so glad to see you.”

 

“Yeah,” Alec answered. “You too.”

 

Magnus rose a little bit and Alec lowered himself down to meet him in a kiss that was, to Alec’s relief, utterly familiar. 

 

“So, Magnus said, waving him inside. “You strike me as the sort who likes to recuperate with a quiet night in after things go off the rails.”

 

“Uh,” Alec said. He wanted to say no, of course not. He was totally the type who went on a crazy adventure and started a fight and broke a bunch of rules. But even the thought of lying about it was exhausting. “Yeah. That’s me.”

 

“I’m the same way,” Magnus replied, holding his hands out to take Alec’s bow, quiver, and bag. “Things here have been absolutely insane. I’ve been so overworked even my own wards were glitching for a few hours yesterday. I was hoping I could interest you in a cocktail, take out, and a movie?”

 

“Perfect.”

 

“Lovely.” Magnus snapped his fingers and an array of take-out menus appeared on the bar that separated the kitchen from the main room of the loft. “I’ll go put your things in my bedroom. Feel free to pick something for dinner.”

 

Magnus disappeared down the hallway, and Alec turned to the menus. Magnus’s tastes were… varied. A couple of the menus he’d conjured up weren’t in English or even Spanish.

 

Alec rejected a hipster pizza place, not wanting to seem too boring. After it, he tossed a menu written entirely in Korean, except for the speech bubble coming from a giant cartoon octopus on the cover which read “Very Yum.” He didn’t want to get in over his head pretending to be adventurous either. By the time Magnus returned, Alec had narrowed the menu selection down to an Indian place, an Asian fusion place, and a run of the mill Chinese place. 

 

“These three looked good,” Alec said.

 

Magnus peered down at the menus on the counter. “Oh, you  didn’t like “Very Yum?”

 

Alec shrugged. “I don’t read Korean.”

 

“Neither do I, but the number three and the number five are to die for.”

 

“I… “ For a moment, Alec was going to protest, but let go. He didn’t know anything about Korean food. And he was sick of always feeling stodgy and predictable. He wanted to try new things tonight. He wanted to try so many new things. Why not start with mystery dinner? “Okay. What is it?”

 

“Noodles, sort of a sweet spicy sauce, sliced meat and vegetables,” Magnus said. “We can get something else if you’d like. Everything you picked is good too.”

 

“Is it really called “Very Yum?”

 

“I don’t think so, but I’ve never caught the real name when I’ve called. We don’t have to order from there, we can order from any of these three places.”

 

“No, I’m not super attached to any of these places and I should… try more new things.”

 

Alec wondered if he was imagining the evaluating look out of the corner of Magnus’s eye. 

 

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

 

Yeah,” Alec said. “I’m sure.”

 

Magnus ordered, then made them both cocktails and settled down on the couch next to Alec, just close enough that their knees brushed. 

 

Alec took a sip of the light blue drink Magnus had served him. It was strange and light. “So, why did your week go off the rails?” 

 

Magnus groaned into his glass. “Valentine. News is spreading, and more rumor than news. I’m getting call after a call for wards, talismans, tracking. I had to send a few people away to find another warlock, I’ve only got so much magic to go around.” He sighed, looked at his glass and sipped at it again. “And you? You’ve been pretty overrun too?”

 

Alec nodded. “Yeah. I told you about all the demon stuff and the.. Jace stuff.”

 

“Right.”

 

“And I also finally reported my mother to Lydia.”

 

“I’m sorry. I imagine she didn’t take that very well.”

 

“No. She really did not.”

 

“What pushed you over the edge?”

 

“She… tried to marry me off again.”

 

Magnus’s face went hard. The liquid in his glass started to ripple, back and forth across the surface.  “What?”

 

“I mean, that’s not why I reported her, but yeah. She called me into her office and gave me a stack of letters. She’d been writing to a few contacts in Idris who had somehow coughed up some daughters who still wanted to meet me… for some reason.  And she… begged me to read over them, and I refused and stormed out. And then at the debrief in the morning, she tried to censure and demote me. So I went to Lydia.”

 

“What did Lydia do?”

 

“I’m not sure yet,” Alec answered. “She said the censure and demotion are officially under her review, but that my mother can’t retaliate against me for not getting married.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Magnus said. “I hope you’ll believe that it’s not about you. Your mother has hated me for decades.”

 

“Well, she’s had a very clear idea of my role in her legacy for at least two decades. It’s about that too. And I know she thinks she’s protecting me… she’s just… wrong.”

 

Magnus set his hand over Alec’s knee. “We should pick out something to watch.”

 

 Alec agreed gratefully. He had already gone over his mother’s reaction to him, and to his budding relationship with Magnus over and over again. Isabelle had exhausted him with wanting to talk about it. Lydia had been supportive but had asked him more questions than he wanted to answer. It was a relief that Magnus could so easily pick up on the fact that he didn’t want to talk about it again.

 

Their food came. Magnus made them each another cocktail. They picked out something mildly amusing to have on in the background. 

 

It was peaceful, Alec thought, as he sunk back against the couch and let Magnus tuck an arm around him. Everything else in his life was chaotic. Choosing Magnus had caused a lot of that chaos, but being with him here was the only time in weeks Alec had felt like he was in the harbor instead of in the storm.

 

And that feeling of finally being able to relax started to change a little bit. Magnus’s arm around Alec’s shoulders got just a little bit tighter to Alec’s body. His long, heavily ringed fingers started to move against Alec’s shoulder, and, after a while, to stray under the hem of his tee shirt sleeve.

 

Just a little bit of a tease. A suggestion, an invitation. 

 

But there was still that thing in the air between them. Magnus had said that Alec’s nerves were something they could talk about. They hadn’t talked yet. 

 

Magnus's fingers crept up the side of Alec’s neck. Alec let his head drop to the side, opening himself up to Magnus, surprised at how easy it was to overcome the years of training telling him not to leave his neck exposed like this. Especially to a warlock. 

 

Maybe they didn’t have to talk tonight, Alec thought. Maybe the sex conversation was something they could push back a little longer. Save for some night when it hadn’t been so long since they’d seen each other. For some night that wasn’t happening after such an awful week. A night when Alec wasn’t stuffed with Korean food and still mentally exhausted and trying not to dread his mother’s reaction to him refusing to take advantage of some poor sheltered girl.

 

“Alec?” Magnus whispered.

 

Before he could say anything else, Alec turned and kissed Magnus. Magnus made a cut off noise of surprise, before pressing back against Alec’s lips. It was a good kiss. They way Magnus’s hands ran over  Alec’s back and shoulders and neck and up into his hair was good. The way Magnus came with him so easily when Alec dropped onto his back and pulled Magnus down on top of him was amazing. 

 

But, even as the heat built between them, as Alec felt his own breath getting shorter and shorter, as Magnus’s hands slipped under Alec’s shirt, and Alec broke the kiss just long enough to toss his shirt over the edge of the couch— Alec could feel the hesitation at the back of his mind. It was almost like part of him was waiting to sound an alarm. Like he was watching over his own shoulder waiting for himself to get overwhelmed, ask Magnus to stop.  But that same extraneous part of himself couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if he didn’t let himself get overwhelmed. If he told Magnus he didn’t have to stop. 

 

The air around them shivered, accompanied by the smell and light of magic. Alec fell back out of the kiss with a gasp and looked over. Magnus had made the couch bigger. Instead of ending an inch or so from Alec’s elbow, it had stretched out to the size of a king sized bed.

On top of him, Magnus sat up and pulled himself out of his own shirt. With his legs straddling Alec’s hips, the strain against the front of Magnus’s midnight blue pants was obvious and made Alec that much more aware of the fact that he was in a similar state. 

 

“Alec?” Magnus asked gently. “Is this still okay? We can stop here.”

 

Alec shook his head. “I don’t want to stop.” He filled his lungs so full that he could feel all the muscles around his chest stretch and strain. “I don’t know what I want, but I don’t want to stop.”

 

Magnus nodded and set his hands to Alec’s stomach, brushing up and down the line of muscle at the center of Alec’s body. “You mentioned that you’re nervous because you’ve never been able to practice?”

 

“Uh… I… basically,” Alec replied. It sounded so stupid, even in Magnus’s even, understanding tone. 

 

“Would a demonstration help?” Magnus asked, the corner of his mouth turning up mischievously. 

 

A strange new shiver moved down Alec’s spine. “Okay.”

 

“Just tap my shoulder if you want me to stop,” Magnus said. 

 

Magnus ran his hands down Alec’s chest, looking up for assurance as he undid Alec’s fly and peeled Alec out of his jeans. 

 

Alec tried to get his breathing back under control. Naked wasn’t a big issue for him. One of the first nights he’d stayed with Magnus there had been a misunderstanding when Alec changed into his pajamas in front of Magnus. In a culture where your power and status comes from the marks on your skin, there weren’t a lot of rules about showing that skin off. 

Alec was aware that being naked— in this situation— should be a bigger deal, but it just wasn’t. This wasn’t the part of tonight he’d been worrying about. He let his clothes go, with very little thought about their loss, until Magnus started to undress.

 

Magnus naked was a revelation. His colorful, meticulous clothes made him look delicate. Even the angry jackets he’d started wearing after Alec told him that he’d proposed to Lydia had made him seem like he was trying to hide something about the shape of him. 

 

But the shape of him was perfect. Magnus was broad across the shoulders, and his legs were long. He was muscular in a way Alec wasn’t. Alec was trained for strength and force. Magnus… Magnus was clearly built to move. His muscles rippled under his gleaming skin as he gathered up their clothes and dropped them over the edge of the couch. Alec could see every last one of those muscles, even the long ones over the tops of his thighs, react as Magnus just… moved. And between his thighs— 

 

Alec jumped as Magnus touched his face. He hadn’t been watching for that particular movement. 

 

“You okay?” Magnus asked. “You look worried.”

 

Alec shook his head. “Sorry. Yes. I’m…  I just… I’m concentrating.”

 

Magnus grinned at him. His hands moved from Alec’s face down to his chest. “Concentrating on me?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Magnus laughed his way into another kiss and Alec kissed him back. He held his body away from Alec, curved over him instead of pressed against him, and Alec tried, really did try, to stay focused on the way Magnus was kissing him. But with his concentration broken, Alec’s training had kicked back in.

 

Where was Magnus’s Mark?

 

All warlocks had Marks. Horns, hooves, blue or green skin, claw-like hands. Something that indicated their demon parentage. There were some complicated warlock politics around glamouring, or nowadays, surgically removing, your Mark, but all warlocks were born with one. 

 

Alec had never seen Magnus’s. It would be outrageous for a High Warlock to have theirs removed, so he must still have his, and it wasn’t his visible while he was dressed, and Alec knew he didn’t have hooves, so it must be under his clothes somewhere… which made sense, considering the fact that he was always completely covered up. 

 

Magnus started to close the gap between them, rolling his body down against Alec’s from hips to chest. 

 

The fact that Alec could feel Magnus’s cock pressed to his own suddenly shorted out any other thoughts. 

 

This was really happening. 

 

They’d  never been pressed together like this. Not a scrap of fabric separating them. Magnus was surprisingly warm. He was muscular like Alec was but more… compact. More shoulders, less torso. His chest was smooth, and the tickle of hair along his legs was nothing like Alec’s. 

 

Magnus started to kiss his way down Alec’s neck. Alec set his hands to Magnus’s shoulders and slowly, carefully let his hands run across Magnus’s shoulder blades. 

 

No wings. 

 

So either it was a tail, or  it was something else Magnus could hide. 

 

 _Oh, man, I hope it’s not a tai_ — 

 

But Magnus moved his hand between their bodies and Alec’s train of thought derailed completely, even though Magnus stopped at Alec’s hip, clearly giving him time in case he wanted to stop, or protest. 

 

And part of him did. Wanted to be sure, wanted to know how to reciprocate first. But it was a small part, overwhelmed easily by the parts of him that wanted, so badly, for Magnus to just touch him. 

 

And Magnus did. 

 

Alec gasped, and let his head rock backward. 

 

“Stop me if you need to,” Magnus whispered. 

 

“Don’t stop,” Alec whispered back.

 

Magnus touched Alec methodically at first. Kissing him, with one hand over Alec’s shoulder and the other wrapped around his cock, moving slowly, then faster, changing his grip and his approach until he found something that made Alec gasp and twist out of the kiss. 

 

“Good?” Magnus asked, breathlessly, as he began to kiss his way down Alec’s neck again.

 

“Good,” Alec affirmed.

 

“I can make it better,” Magnus chuckled, moving down Alec’s check,  and pressing a kiss to his hip bone. His lips hovered there, the same way his hand had. Again, giving Alec a chance to stop him and get used to him being there. Alec breathed and waited. 

 

Magnus pressed another kiss to his hip bone, then into the dip between his hip and his thigh. Then another. Then back up.

 

Alec was trembling, but it was anticipation this time, not fear, and Magnus seemed to know that. Alec could feel Magnus's warm breath moving across his cock, then a soft, exploratory brush of Magnus’s lips over-

 

“Charming.”

 

The cold voice made Magnus and Alec both jump. 

 

“It’s like you found a cute little incarnation of Will Herondale as a virgin. You were always so sentimental.”

 

“What the fuck are you doing here, Camille?” Magnus growled.

 

The fog of arousal clogging Alec’s mind took a little longer to clear away, and by the time he was sitting up and facing the vampire, Magnus had already magicked up a sheet to cover Alec and magicked himself back into his clothes. 

 

Camille was standing a few steps inside the doorway, hair piled high on her head, wearing a venomous green dress and a lot of gold jewelry. Her smile was fanged and evil. “Do you know what this reminds me of, Magnus, darling?”

 

“Camille—“

 

“Sarajevo. That tall guerrilla boy we found in a tavern. I could just arrange myself here—” she grinned even more widely and sat down in the armchair across from them— “You could find me a tall glass of blood, I could watch the two of you get back to it, and we could reenact that whole evening.” She turned her haughty gaze on Alec. “It was quite an amusing performance, and the boy was delicious.”

 

Alec’s stomach churned at the thought. Of Camille and Magnus together like that, with some anonymous mundane. Of Camille and Magnus together at all. 

 

“What do you want from me?” Magnus growled.

 

“I’m actually here with an offer for the Angel.”

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Feelings.

 

Suck.

 

It wasn’t as though Alec had been oblivious to that fact before everything with Magnus started. The whole secret-crush-on-a-straight-parabatai thing had fucked him up plenty of times. 

 

The Jace thing had never been real. Alec knew that. If he’d ever really truly thought there was a chance that he and Jace could have been more than what they were, he wouldn’t have agreed to become Jace’s parabatai. Parabatai could never fall in love. It was one of the oldest laws. 

 

Which didn’t mean that how _he’d felt_ about Jace hadn’t been real. He’d had feelings and fantasies about Jace that he knew Jace couldn’t reciprocate. 

 

Getting hurt wasn’t new.

 

Getting hurt like this was. 

 

Alec had listened to Camille’s offer. She’d told him that she expected an answer in three days, and given him a little vial of blood that, apparently, he could use to summon her. 

 

She’d given one to Magnus too. 

 

And then she’d left. 

 

Magnus had looked at Alec, then to the vial of blood in his hand. “Alec, I’m sorry. I’ll… I can use this to specifically ward against Camille. I can make it so she can’t come within a block of the building.”

 

“Okay,” Alec answered, fishing his clothes out from under the couch. Magnus watched him for a moment, then seemed to feel awkward about looking on while Alec dressed. He went to a cabinet on the other side of the living room and tucked the vial of blood inside. 

 

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t… she shouldn’t have been able to get in here like that—“

 

“But she did,” Alec countered. “Is it true? What she said?”

 

Magnus shrugged, looking strangely helpless. “She wouldn’t offer information on finding Valentine if she had nothing to back it up. She was a little more evasive than I would trust about whether or not her information will really lead to Jace, but it’s possible that—“

 

“No,” Alec cut him off. “Whether or not we need or want Camille’s help is something I’m going to talk to Lydia about. I’m asking you about Sarajevo.”

 

Magnus flinched at the word, and Alec felt a little surge of some feeling he didn’t understand. “ _Sarajevo_. Did that really happen?”

 

Magnus starting gesturing and trying to talk. 

 

“Got it,” Alec huffed, buckling his belt. 

 

“Alec,” Magnus finally said, quietly. “That was a hundred and forty years ago. And… Camille…it was a strange time between us, and we were different people.”

 

Alec finished with his belt and glanced  up at Magnus for a  moment.

 

“And she barely drank that boy, and he was agreeable to the whole arrangement.”

 

Alec steeled himself. “And what was his name?”

 

Magnus’s eyes went wide before he looked off to the side, thinking for a moment before finally letting his eyes clench shut. 

 

“Of course,” Alec huffed. He walked past Magnus to Magnus’s bedroom, Magnus caught up to him as he reached the doorway and they both rushed inside. Alec spotted his things, neatly hanging on Magnus’s closet door. He grabbed his jacket out and pulled it on.

 

“Alec… “ Magnus started. “I…I would never have told you about any of ou— my past in that way. But I _have_ a past. I… don’t think I need to apologize for the fact that I have quite a lot of past.”

 

“I understand that,” Alec replied. “This was… that was just a lot. Okay? I need some time.”

 

Magnus seemed to harden. He straightened up and his mouth pressed thin. “That whole night was Camille’s idea.”

 

Alec held in a growl as he slung his quiver over his back. “Of course it was. You can’t stand up to her.”

 

“Excuse me?” Magnus looked genuinely affronted. 

 

“I said, you can’t stand up to her,” Alec snapped.

 

He grabbed his bow and headed back out into the main room, Magnus still following behind him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t spoken to Camille in a hundred and thirty-eight years.”

 

“And the two times you’ve seen her in the last six weeks you’ve watched her quietly and then apologized for what she did after she left.” Alec put his hand on the knob at the front door. “I believe you when you say you don’t have feelings for her anymore. I really do. But…” Alec stopped himself. He wanted to tell Magnus that the thought that he and Camille were ever together _disgusted_ him. The idea of Magnus seeing something in _Camille Belcourt_ and trying to love her because of whatever he thought he saw made him sick _._ Camille made him _sick._

 

But Alec had a lot of practice in not saying what he really wanted to say. 

 

“It’s hard to believe that you don’t feel something for her when you keep having to apologize to me _after_ she says things like that. And when you just… stand behind her like a child when she does it.”

 

“Alec—“

 

“I’m going back to the Institute.”

 

“Alec—”

 

“I’m going home, Magnus,” Alec had said, more firmly before rejecting Magnus’s offer to portal him back to the Institute, and leaving for the subway, where he would realize that he was only wearing one sock.

 

The story sounded even worse as he retold it to Isabelle and Lydia over a drink.

 

"Umm…” Lydia managed. “Wow.”

 

“Yeah. Very wow. So much wow,” Isabelle seconded. 

 

“Okay. So, I need to start with business,” Lydia said, taking out her phone.

 

“Agreed,” Alec said, turning to her and taking a sip of his beer. He’d never had one before. Isabelle had convinced him to order it. It was bitter and tasted a little bit like oranges in a weird way. He wasn’t sure if he liked it. 

 

“What does Camille want from you?” Lydia asked. 

 

“It’s not me, it’s the Clave. The Institute in Romania has her two subjugates. Walker and Archer. She wants them back.”

 

Lydia arched an eyebrow. “Seriously? That’s all she wants? Her nauseating little pets back?”

 

“That doesn’t sound too easy,” Isabelle sighed. “Considering that it’s been illegal for vampires to make humans into subjugates for like 200 years.”

 

“Actually,” Lydia said. “It’s doable. It might even be easy. It’s not legal to make subjugates anymore, but the Accords allow vampires to keep  subjugates that were made before the Accords were ratified. Camille’s more than old enough to have legal subjugates. And Vampires are allowed to give existing subjugates as gifts or to bequeath them.”

 

Isabelle scoffed. Alec’s gut churned. Vampires. Fucking vampires. 

 

“But it’s legal to kill the damn things,” Alec argued. “It’s not like they can function without a vampire master to keep feeding them blood.”

 

“Right,” Lydia said. “It’s legal to kill them if a vampire is actively using them for violence or sabotage. But if they are just found… wandering around, there’s a bunch of really sticky red tape. They have to  be kept for some percentage of the recorded or estimated lifespan of the vampire who made them, or some effort has to be made to send them off to that vampire’s known associates. It can be disastrous to destroy them without proper due diligence. They have a lot of value in vampire culture. And they are _technically_ still human.”

 

“Ugh,” Alec opined. “Disgusting. Vampires… I just… how? How do you _touch_ a vampire? Like… how stupid do you have to be to look at it and think it has feelings?”

 

Lydia nodded, but Isabelle narrowed her eyes at him. “Simon’s a vampire.”

 

Alec rolled his eyes. “Simon is a fledgling. _Camille’s_ fledgling.”

 

“Raphael let us out of the hotel Dumort.”

 

“The first time,” Alec reminded her.

 

“There’s the vampire in Los Angeles who started a late night pizzeria. That’s all he does. Late night pizza.”

 

“Okay, I hear what you’re saying,” Alec sighed. “But none of those people are Camille.”

 

“Maybe Camille wasn’t always Camille,” Isabelle countered. 

 

“She’s at least a thousand years old,” Lydia cut in. “I’d bet serious money that she’s been _Camille_ for a long time.”

 

“Also,” Isabelle said, leaning forward, her cocktail glass cradled in one hand. “Mom was saying a very similar thing about Warlocks earlier today, and she’s said those same words _verbatim_ about Seelies.”

 

Alec paused, looked down into his beer and took a gulp of it. “I’m not Mom.” He took another drink. “And… come on. Camille Belcourt is awful.”

 

“I agree,” Lydia said. “And there’s no reason she can’t contact the Romanian Institute about her subjugates herself, so she’s only doing this to fuck with you, which makes it a lot more likely that her information is going to lead us into a trap. But partial information is better than no information.” She took her phone out of her pocket and started typing. “And legally destroying subjugates is expensive and involved. Romania will be glad to get rid of the stupid things. Camille can come pick them up when you break the vial and we’ll see what she has to say about Valentine.” She tapped her phone screen with force. “So that’s one problem solved.”

 

“But there are just so many more to discuss,” Izzy sighed. 

 

“I know,” Alec said. “This is really bad, isn’t it?

 

“No,” Isabelle and Lydia answered together, both shaking their heads. 

 

“You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” Lydia said softly. “And you were… assertive, but not a total ass.”

 

“But,” Isabelle cut in. “You’re the one who decided to date a 300-year-old warlock. If you thought he was going to come without some baggage attached… you’re a moron.”

 

“And I get that you’re mad about how he’s handling it,” Lydia followed up. “But it’s not Magnus’s fault that Camille is acting like this. All the information we have on her is that she’s a petty, manipulative bitch.”

 

“So why _date her?_ ” Alec demanded. 

 

Lydia and Isabelle exchanged a look. A sort of “Are you going to tell him or should I?” look. Isabelle’s expression turned slightly pained after a moment. Lydia’s became soft and a little bit over careful.

 

“Alec… there are a lot of reasons to date someone who isn’t…” Lydia started. 

 

“Maybe he just wanted to fuck her,” Isabelle interrupted. “At first, anyway.”

 

Alec tapped his fingers against his beer. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

 

“According to what we know, they got together almost two centuries ago. Things might have been different. Both of them could have been different,” Lydia said gently. “Maybe she wasn’t quite as terrible, or didn’t seem as terrible at first, and Magnus had gotten sucked in a little bit before she revealed her true colors. We know that Magnus is a little… naive about who he goes after.”

 

“What does that mean?” Alec asked. Lydia and Isabelle both turned alarmingly knowing looks on him.

 

“You,” Isabelle said. “You nearly threw yourself down a demon's throat because we saw that you cared about your parabatai, and Magnus thought to himself— this one.”

 

“And then you got engaged,” Lydia added. “And he kept going after you.”

 

“And Camille was older and powerful and beautiful,” Isabelle cut in. “I have a feeling _you_ get the appeal of that.”

 

“Okay. I don’t want to talk about Camille anymore,” Alec huffed, gulping his beer again.

 

“Fine,” Lydia replied. “Has he texted you at all?”

 

“He asked to let him know I got back to the Institute safe,” Alec rolled his eyes. “I’m a demon hunter. I think I can handle the subway.”

 

“Did you text him, though?” Isabelle asked. 

 

Alec felt his cheeks go just a little pink. “Yeah…. Just… you know. ‘I’m home’.”

 

Lydia shook her head and laughed. 

 

“What?” Alec asked. 

 

“Just… I’m so glad I didn’t marry you.”

 

Alec glared at her. “Ouch?”

 

She reached across the table and patted his hand. “No. It’s a good thing.” She sighed. “Okay. Look, Romania will probably be able to send us the subjugates tomorrow. We are going to need a plan for dealing with Camille… and I think Magnus should be there. He knows her better than anyone else.”

 

Alec groaned. “You’re talking about a meeting with you, me, Magnus, Camille and my mother, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes,” Lydia confirmed. “You need to talk to Magnus before that happens.”

 

“Fuck,” Alec said quietly. “One of you should buy me another drink.”

 

***

 

As Camille slunk into the Sanctuary, Alec was even more grateful that he’d taken Lydia’s advice to talk to Magnus before this meeting. It had been a tense phone conversation and Alec still felt like he’d admitted too much and come across as so much younger than he wanted to sound. He also felt like he’d let Magnus… get away with keeping more of his past, and his past with Camille,  secret than Alec had wanted. 

 

But it was a start. Alec was happy to see Magnus when he met him at the front door. 

 

Magnus gave him an uneasy smile. “Hello, Alexander.”

 

“Hi.” Alec gestured Magnus inside the Institute door and shut it behind him. 

 

“I was a little worried you would let your mother retrieve me tonight.”

 

Alec let out a strangled little chuckle. “Oh, no. I’m nowhere near that mad at you.”

 

Magnus nodded. “That’s better than nothing, I suppose.” He cleared his throat. “Camille is… going to be awful tonight.”

 

“Duh? Isn’t that the mundane term? Duh?”

 

“I thought about what you said. You’re right. I don’t… defend anyone against Camille. But… the thing is… vampires get bored. They like their little games. I don’t… Camille can be so much worse than you’ve seen her be. I don’t want to antagonize her and have her… set her sights on you.”

 

Alec shrugged. “Okay. I… I’d feel better about that if I knew she couldn’t just waltz into your loft whenever she feels like it.”

 

Magnus stuck his hand in his pocket. “Yes. I assumed you’d feel that way. And so—“ He pulled his hand back out, holding a delicate filigree  gold ring set with a sharply cut green stone.

 

“What is it?” Alec asked. 

 

“It’s how Camille got in through the wards,” Magnus answered. “It’s a slippery bit of sorcery, the details are a little lurid and complex. I’d forgotten that I had this. But after you left… I stayed up researching and going through my entire apartment piece by piece.” He dug his hand back into his pocket and brought out a cloth bag, tied at the top with some kind of leather. “There’s a fireplace in here somewhere, isn’t there?”

 

“There’s one in my room,” Alec answered. 

 

“Put the ring in the bag, and toss it into the flames to destroy it.”

 

Alec nodded. “This doesn’t mean she’s gone forever. And this doesn’t fix everything.”

 

“I know,” Magnus replied. “I’m not saying that it does. This is… an offer of good faith. And another apology.”

 

Alec took the ring, and the little bag of spell ingredients and tucked them into his pocket. “Thank you.”

 

“Ahem.”

 

Alec felt the sound more than he heard it. He jammed the ring further down in his pocket and turned to see his mother standing at the base of the stairs, arms crossed over her chest and her mouth pressed into a thin, lipless line. “If you are quite finished? I don’t care to have a vampire and her abominations in my home any longer.” 

 

Magnus closed his eyes for a moment, as though he was bracing himself, and then turned to Maryse. “Only too happy to remove them from your custody, Maryse. If you’ll lead the way to the Sanctuary?”

 

It was about as awkward as Alec imagined it would be. Camille managed to bring up another kinky incident between her and Magnus while talking to Alec, and somehow painted a very clear picture of the position she’d found Alec and Magnus in  the prior  night while talking to Alec’s mother. Helping nothing, in between her barbs and unnecessary commentary she clucked and cooed over her subjugates, sliced a fingernail down her forearm and let them both— Alec wished there was another word— suckle there as she told them that Valentine was killing downworlders and injecting their blood into mundanes before using the Mortal Cup on them. He wasn’t just creating an army of new shadowhunters, he was trying to give them abilities and powers that regular shadowhunters didn’t have. 

 

This information froze Lydia and Maryse. It was Alec who had to ask— “What about Jace? You promised us information on finding Jace?”

 

Camille smiled cruelly. “Of course. The Seelie Queen is inexplicably fond of your young rebel. Only Seelies can track over water. If you make amends with the Seelies after the recent… unpleasantness, perhaps the Queen would assist you in bringing Valentine’s son home. I’m sure his sister grieves for him.”

 

Her fangs came out as she smiled.

 

“That’s the help you offer?” Alec’s mother demanded. “Well known information about Seelie powers?

 

Camille looked at Magnus. “What more do we owe Shadowhunters?”

 

Magnus scoffed. “Miss Branwell, I’ll portal Camille out of your Institute now. I’m sure she has nothing else of value to add.”

 

“Thank you,  Magnus,” Lydia replied. “Send us your bill.” She walked toward the Sanctuary door, stopped, glanced back at Maryse and Alec and cleared her throat. Alec and his mother followed her outside. 

 

“I have work to do,” Lydia said as the door closed behind them. “Alec? If Magnus manages to glean any further information from Camille before he portals her back, drop a report in my inbox.” She patted his arm before she set off down the hallway, leaving Alec alone with his mother. 

 

Maryse folded her hands over one another in front of her. “So. Your plan to “get to know” him. It seems to be going well.”

 

Alec held her gaze. “A lot of people have pasts,” he responded. 

 

“Alec, you’re being ridiculous. He can’t possibly be good enough at… what Camille walked in on you two doing… for you to continue this _ludicrous_ dalliance.”

 

“It’s not a dalliance!”

 

“It is to him,” Maryse retorted. “He is exactly the person that vampire is describing.  And when he’s done experimenting with bedding a shadowhunter, he’s going back to her. Or someone just like her.”

 

“You don’t know hi—“ Alec started. 

 

“No. Alec. You don’t know him. How could you? Your entire lifespan is just a blink of an eye to him.”

 

“Mom—“

 

“There’s still time. Your father and I have been keeping the news about your little… breakdown quiet. Let the warlock disappear with his whore, and you can still get married. You can still save your—“

 

“I’m can’t get married,” Alec growled, “I’m still—“

 

“Stop!”

 

He steeled himself, took a breath, and somehow kept his voice under control as he told her, “I’m still _gay_ , Mom. I don’t know what it’s going to take to make you understand that. I don’t know if you need to talk to Isabelle, or Lydia or…” —he hesitated for a second before deciding not to hold back any more than he already was—“Really think about what Camille was saying in there earlier. But you need to understand that. I’m still gay.”

 

Maryse shook her head. Her hands moved up until her arms were crossed tightly against her chest. “It doesn’t matter. You have duties. I thought you understood that.”

 

“I do. And I’m fulfilling them. But the Clave can’t force me to get married. You can’t force me to get married. Nothing I’m doing is explicitly against the Law.”

 

“Alec… I am doing everything I can to protect you from this. But if you are going to flaunt that warlock—“

 

“Magnus.”

 

“—for much longer, I can’t keep you hidden. Are you really going to throw away your life to get your cock sucked?”

 

Hearing his mother say something not only that vulgar but so close to something he’d been telling himself only weeks ago was like being slapped. The two of them stared at each other. Neither spoke for a long moment. 

 

“Am I supposed to throw away any chance I have at being happy so that you get a pat on the head from the Clave?” Alec finally demanded. 

 

The Sanctuary door swung open, Magnus stepped out, coming to a halt as suddenly as though there was barbed wire hung between Alec and his mother and Magnus had nearly walked into it. 

 

Alec watched his mother pull in a breath, her chest rising as though she was pulling in breath for a roar. But she didn’t roar. Or yell, or let loose any sort of torrent of words on either of them. 

 

She just hissed, “Downworlders!” and turned, heels click down the tiled hallway. 

 

“Maybe it would be best if I left,” Magnus suggested tentatively.

 

“No,” Alec shook his head. “No… let’s… you know what? Let’s go to my room and burn this fucking ring.”

 

**

 

Alec had hoped that burning the ring would be more cathartic. It did feel good, but in the same way checking a task off a to-do list felt good. It was done, and there was nothing else to say about it. 

 

“So,” Magnus started, sitting on Alec’s bed. “I don’t suppose I’m in your bedroom so that you can vent your frustrations on me? Carnally?Not that I’d mind, really.”

 

“What?” Alec asked, watching the strange black flames from the ring finally start to turn back to orange. 

 

Magnus smiled at him. “Oh. Nothing.” He glanced around Alec’s room. He very nearly seemed awkward, Alec noted with interest. Magnus never seemed awkward. But perched at the edge of Alec’s bed, hands folded in his lap, he looked distinctly out of place. He kept glancing up at the stained glass mural of Raziel with an odd expression on his face.

 

He cleared his throat. “You know what we need?” He snapped his fingers and two paper to-go cups appeared on Alec’s nightstand. Magnus grabbed them both and came to join Alec in front of the fire, handing him a cup.

 

“What is it?” Alec asked.

 

“It’s chai tea,” Magnus answered. “It’s very soothing.”

 

“Is there alcohol in it?” Alec asked. 

 

“No, but I can get you something  stronger if you’d like.”

 

Alec shook his head and took a sip from the little hole in the lid. It was creamy and sweet, with a lot more flavor than Alec had been expecting. “No. This is fine.”

 

Magnus nodded and drank from his own cup. Alec realized that Magnus was waiting for Alec to make a move. Give Magnus some sort of permission to be close to him again. Alec scooted across the stone floor until their hips were touching. When Magnus smiled at him, Alec tucked his free hand into Magnus’s.

 

“I’m sorry about Maryse.”

 

“I… thank you. I don’t want to talk about it tonight,” Alec said. 

 

“Okay.”

 

Alec drank from his cup again. Magnus was right. It was soothing. Or maybe it was Magnus’s touch that was making the stress start to slowly flow out of Alec’s body. 

 

“I don’t suppose the Seelie Queen owes you any favors?” Alec asked Magnus. 

 

Magnus shook his head. “No. I’ve been burned cashing in Seelie favors too many times.”

 

“Can I ask you something about Camille?” Alec said. 

 

He felt Magnus go stiff beside him. “I might not answer.”

 

“If you don’t answer, will you tell me why you won’t?”

 

Magnus was quiet for a few moments. “Yes.”

 

Alec drank deeply from his cup of chai. “Why her? What on earth did you see in her?”

 

“She… Immortality can corrupt, Alec. Some immortals start to think they are superior to those who can die. Some immortals… calcify. Nothing interests them anymore, all the joy and wonder of the world slowly fades away. It’s like dying. Obsessions can take hold. There are bonds that strengthen just because they’ve existed for so many centuries they seem impossible to break. Camille… at one time or another, Camille has been all of those things for me. She was new and exciting when I felt myself fading from the world. She was an echo chamber for the worst of myself when I hated the world. She was someone I thought I could fix for a long time. Someone I believed I had to save. And then she was someone… someone that familiarity gave a sense of permanence.”

 

They sat in silence, drinking their tea and watching the fire. Magnus snapped his fingers. Several plush blankets appeared underneath them. 

 

“She never loved me.”

 

“I’m sorry.” The words surprised Alec, as soon as they were out of his mouth. They seemed to surprise Magnus too. 

 

“Thank you,” he said, eventually. 

 

Alec set his tea down by the fire, then plucked Magnus’s cup out of his hands and set it down too. 

 

“Until we got interrupted, last night was nice,” Alec said. 

 

“It was.”

 

Alec pulled his stele from his pocket, got up and drew a locking rune on his door. Magnus was holding his arms out to him when Alec came turned back and he let Magnus pull him down to the floor into a kiss. 

 

The calm he felt as Magnus kissed him amazed Alec. In the last day, he’d been hurt, bewildered, upset and— not half an hour ago— had been barely containing the fury he wanted to unleash on on his mother. But now, in his dark room, in front of the fire, with Magnus’s chai-flavored lips against his own, he was calm. 

 

The calm turned to warmth as they kept kissing, and desire as Magnus undressed him. In the dark, Alec couldn’t figure out all the buttons and buckles of Magnus’s outfit, but he watched hungrily as Magnus stood, and stripped himself slowly out of his clothes. 

 

“You have a perfectly good bed,” Magnus said, his voice warm with amusement. “Are you sure you want to do this on the floor?”

 

“I mean… it’s more adventurous isn’t it?” Alec asked, only somewhat teasing. Then surprised at the sudden surge of daring, he added. "I want you to get hard, not calcify."

 

Magnus laughed out loud. “I’m sure I can’t bring myself to deny you a little adventure.”

 

Alec laid down on the blankets in front of the fire, and Magnus laid himself down on top of him. Pressing down into him just like he had last night. Tentatively, Alec pressed his hips up into Magnus’s, and when Magnus took it as encouragement, the two of them set a rhythm together, panting and rutting and kissing, until Magnus pulled away with a gasp. 

 

“Alec, I want to try something.”

 

“Okay?”

 

“It’s intimate. And I haven’t… it’s something I save for—“

 

Alec cut him off. He got it. Magnus was trying to give him something that he hadn’t done with very many people. He couldn’t give Alec a first, but he could give him something he rarely gave. 

 

“Magnus? Okay.” Alec said, gasping for breath. “Yes. I’m saying yes.”

 

“Do you need me to tell you how—”

 

“Show me,” Alec replied. 

 

Magnus kissed him again, then moved off of him. He faced the fire, then leaned back and grabbed Alec’s arm, guiding Alec behind him until they were pressed chest to back. He snapped his fingers. In the dark, Alec didn’t see what appeared, but he figured it out when he felt Magnus slip his hand between his own legs and run his slick palm over Alec’s cock, before bringing his thighs back together around Alec.

 

“Find something that feels good,” Magnus whispered. “And touch me after you do.”

 

When Alec got the ability to think back, his first thought was “He definitely doesn’t have a tail.”

 

His second thought was more of a scramble of soft, deep appreciation. Magnus’s calm passivity as Alec slowly started to move between his thighs felt like a gift. He’d found a way to let Alec take control, without needing to know how to do any of the things Magnus could so easily have done to him. The desire running through his body was amazing, but not overwhelming.

 

Alec shuffled and rearranged a few times, trying to find the best way for him and Magnus to fit together until he finally found an angle that felt right. He pressed a kiss to Magnus’s neck and wrapped a hand around his boyfriend’s cock. Magnus sighed with satisfaction, and an idea occurred to Alec. 

 

“Just a second,” he whispered as he let go, and started patting the ground in front of them, looking for the bottle Magnus had conjured. 

 

He found it. Magnus grabbed it and squeezed a little bit of the liquid into his palm, and Alec closed his eyes and pressed his face to Magnus’s neck as he kept moving, coordinating the moment of his hands and his hips as quickly as he could. 

 

“Alec?”

 

“Magnus,” Alec replied breathlessly. 

 

“What?” Magnus asked. “What do you want?”

 

“Alec?” 

 

It took a second before Alec realized that Magnus wasn’t the one saying his name. The voice was faint and when it called his name again, it crackled, almost like a bad cell signal. 

 

“Alec! Alec! Fucking vampires and their fucking—“ the voice got stronger and suddenly, and a hazy light grew brighter in the center of the room. 

 

“Alec!” the figure cried triumphantly as the haze of light focused down into a humanoid shape. “Yes! Okay, I don’t have a lot of time, I’m not sure I did this spell right but I—“ Suddenly, the hazy shape became very distinct. Very distinctly Jace. “Oh… shit.” Jade’s projected eyes went wide, and then his projection hands covered his face. He was wearing something that looked like a cross between pajamas and funeral robes. The long sleeves hung off of his arms as he kept his eyes covered. “By the Angel, Alec. If I’d known you were having sex in front of the fire I would have projected into Izzy’s room.”

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

“Alec? I’m fine,” Jace insisted again as Alec continued to draw iratzes on him. “Really. I’m not even beat up that badly.”

Alec ignored him and started another iratze over the cut running down Jace’s forearm.

Everything was so weird right now. Lydia had met with the projection of Jace, in Alec’s bedroom, standing on the blankets where he and Magnus had been fooling around moments before her arrival, and after only minutes of speaking to Jace, she was dialing up the Clave and they were all going into battle to stop Valentine from opening a demon dimension.

Most of the Lightwoods were in the sick bay, getting patched up. Miraculously, none of them had been hurt that badly. Only Clary and Magnus had sustained injuries beyond the power of a few iratze’s, and they were nothing that Catarina Loss hadn’t been able fix with what at least looked like relative ease and several repetitions of “They both need an hour of rest before they can have visitors. Leave them alone for now.”

Clary’s cot had been carried into Alec’s mother’s office. The last Alec had seen, Luke and Jocelyn were standing outside the door having a furious whispered conversation.

Magnus had been moved into Lydia’s office, and Alec’s attempt to go see him had been thwarted by Catarina herself, who had told him, in no uncertain terms, that he could come back in an hour, and if he came back sooner than that, she would burn one of his eyebrows off.

“Alec!” Jace said, pulling his arm out of Alec’s hands.

The movement felt… strange. Weighted. Pointed.

Alec gulped. He kept looking down at the sheet-covered space between him and Jace as he tucked is stele back into his pocket and moved a few more inches back from his parabatai. He rolled a few options for replies around in his mouth before exhaustion won out and he asked,“Is this because of earlier?”

“What?”

Alec repeated the question. He wanted… it wasn’t the question he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t quite figure out how to ask for the information he really needed.

Yes, Jace had been one of the people telling him that he could get out of his marriage and that he could go after what he really wanted but Jace had also been… the focus of what Alec really wanted for a long time. And at some point in the last few weeks, he had figured that out.

When Alec talked to Isabelle and Lydia, he _abbreviated_. He told them a lot more about Magnus and about being with Magnus than he had ever imagined himself telling anyone, but he still talked around things and implied things. There were a lot of things he didn’t say directly.

But Jace had seen everything. Everything. It wasn’t just that they’d both been naked, it wasn’t even that they’d sort of been having sex. It was all of it. Being in the dark in Alec’s room, the to-go mugs at the side of the blanket’s Magnus had conjured up by the fire, the fact that they’d been making up from their first fight. There had been so many false starts and weird hiccups and in the moment where Alec had finally really been starting to feel like he was starting _a relationship_ , a projection of Jace had shown up in the middle of his bedroom and seemed weirded out.

Alec didn’t feel bad about what he wanted anymore. He’d given up on that years ago. He’d seen the boys around him starting to notice girls. It hadn’t taken much for Alec to realize that he just didn’t. He liked guys. He liked the way they moved and smiled and smelled. He hadn’t been able to change it, or act on it, so he’d focused on just ignoring it and hiding it. It was only recently that he’d discovered that, as hard as he’d been hiding, everyone had still known.

But knowing and seeing were different, the same way that wanting and doing were different.

“Earlier,” Alec repeated. “Tonight.”

“What are you talki—” Jace started, and then the answer seemed to come to him. “Oh.”

“Are you…” Alec started, cleared his throat and forced himself to look Jace in the eye. “Do you want someone else to rune you?”

“No,” Jace answered immediately, then sighed heavily. “I want you to stop trying to put an iratze on a scar from two years ago.” Jace held up his arm and tapped the line that Alec had been about to rune. “You’re exhausted and distracted. Just… take a second, okay? Breathe.”

“Right,” Alec sighed, tucked his stele away and sat down next to Jace. “I’ve been worried about you,” he admitted.

“You’ve been worried about me?” Jace asked with a hint of a laugh.

“You walked into a portal with Valentine!”

Jace shrugged. “I spent ten years of my life with Valentine. I knew what I was doing. I’ve been worrying about you.”

“Me?” Alec asked, nonplussed. “Why the hell would you worry about me?”

“Uh… I guess I didn’t have to. Based on… earlier.”

Alec opened his mouth to excuse or explain or justify what Jace saw but stopped. He shook his head. “Like I never walked in on you and Clary making out in a public space. I was in my _locked_ bedroom. With my boyfriend.” The word was strange in his mouth. Probably because he hadn’t said it yet. Not even to Magnus. “So. You know. Get over it.”

Jace laughed. “Okay. I will.”

Alec nodded. “Right.” He stood up. “And it’s been about an hour, so I’m going to go check on him now.”

“Yeah,” Jace agreed. “I’m all out of cuts and scrapes. Go see your… um… boyfriend.”

They gave each other an awkward smile before Alec turned and walked out of the sickbay and down the hall toward Lydia’s office. About halfway there he met Catarina loss, who, sounding aggravated, told him that Magnus had been asking for him.

“Be careful with him,” she sighed, as she walked past Alec, back toward the sick bay. “He gets so bent out of shape when he gets hurt.”

Lydia’s office door foreboded significantly more than usual. Alec and Magnus had wound up in different parts of the battle. Alec hadn’t seen him get hurt and had no idea what to expect. He braced himself for whatever he might see, and opened the door.

Inside Lydia’s office, Magnus was reclining on a sickbay cot, which had been adjusted so he could sit up in it. Alec quickly scanned him over for gashes, bruises, bandages, or blood. He scanned him so quickly in fact, that it took him a moment to realize what was there while he looked for what wasn’t.

Magnus looked perfectly healthy but completely different. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a plain white tee shirt. The heavy black eyeshadow he’d worn earlier was gone but not entirely gone. He still had faded dark smudges around his eyes.

Alec was new to having a boyfriend, but he was pretty sure that when you visited your boyfriend after he’d gotten wounded in battle your first thought shouldn’t be, “Oh, fuck, he is so hot.”

“Alexander!” Magnus called out, swinging his legs over the side of the cot and walking over to Alec. One of his ringed hands pressed against the small of Alec’s back, the other came to the back of Alec’s head, and Magnus yanked him down into a kiss. “Are you alright?” Magnus asked breathlessly before, to Alec’s surprised, he was dragged into another kiss.

“I’m alright,” Alec replied against Magnus’s lips. Magnus started walking backward, dragging Alec with him, and somehow still kissing him. “What about you? Are you—“ Magnus pulled him closer again, close enough that Alec could feel exactly how hard he was under those out-of-character jeans. “Umm,” Alec tried to bring his focus off of that and back to the present moment, in which Magnus seemed to have lost his mind. “What’s wrong with you?”

Magnus pulled out of the kiss and dropped back down onto the cot. His hands went directly to Alec’s weapons belt before he finally slowed down. “I nearly drowned,” he said. “And I’ve been sitting here with Catarina magicking water out of my lungs, fixing a broken rib, and patching up a mild concussion.”

Alec reached out and smoothed down Magnus’s still wet hair. Why hadn’t anyone bothered to come and tell him any of that? He would have demanded to be in here with Magnus for the last hour if he’d known.

“Magnus—“ he started.

“And now I am going to suck you off.”

Magnus had Alec’s belt half off before Alec caught up with him and grabbed his hand to stop him.

“Okay,” Alec said, gently pushing Magnus’s hands away. “That’s the concussion talking.”

Magnus shook his head. “No, that’s the nearly drowned talking. Take off your clothes.” He took a deep breath and finally seemed to still a little bit before he looked back up at Alec. “If you want to, of course.”

If Magnus had been about half as shaken as he looked, Alec probably would have done it. His own nerves were a mess from the battle and from getting interrupted the way they had been before the battle. Plus he’d been about half hard ever since he’d seen what Magnus was wearing.

But he didn’t want to do this for the first time when Magnus was such a mess. Even if Magnus’s hands had strayed back to Alec’s hips and his fingertips were tucked under Alec’s belt again.

“Let’s just take a second,” Alec said. “Scoot.”

“Scoot?” Magnus asked eyebrows raised.

Alec waved his hand, indicating that Magnus should move to the other side of the small cot. Magnus did, and Alec laid himself down in the space that Magnus had left empty.

“Warlocks don’t scoot?”

Magnus shook his head. “It’s not a word I’ve run across in my other circles, no.” He leaned back against the raised half of the cot. “It’s very undignified.”

Alec leaned back next to Magnus and slotted his fingers through the warlock’s. “What happened?”

“The ship cracked in half and I fell into the water.”

“Can you not swim?”

Magnus made a sound that was something like a deeply disgusted scoff, “Of course I can—“ he stopped, squeezed Alec’s hand with a sigh, and started again in a much gentler tone.“I was born in a small fishing village. I grew up in the water. I’m a very strong swimmer. But I wasn’t expecting the ship to crack under my feet and I was occupied with demons when it did. I hit my head on the way down, managed to turn my fall into a dive, but hit debris in the water and broke my rib. By the time I broke the surface I was surrounded by demons and it’s difficult to swim and do magic at the same time. A couple of Seelie Knights showed up just in time.”

Hurt and worry and a desire to do anything it took to make Magnus feel better, (but also put him somewhere full of soft pillows and tons of chai tea where no one could ever hurt him) overtook Alec, washing over him so hard and so fast that he couldn’t speak. Shadowhunters grew up knowing they would probably die in battle. No one sought that death out, and those deaths were mourned… but they were part of your life as a Shadowhunter. Alec had worried about Izzy and Jace and his parents and Magnus when they’d boarded Valentine’s ship, but there was something about the thought of Magnus dying that was different than if it had been a member of his family. It seemed… more impossible.

He turned toward Magnus, moved closer, and kissed him. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I don’t know what I would have… Fuck. I would have beaten down Lydia’s door if I’d known what happened to you. I thought it was a magic thing.”

Magnus shushed him between kisses. “No, don’t worry. Catarina never would have let you in while she was working. She’s very particular like that.”

As Magnus kissed him, Alec’s thoughts about it being a bad idea to fool around right after a battle, when Magnus was shaken and recovering and more vulnerable than Alec had ever seen him all started to go quiet. They moved apart as Magnus tucked pressed his body closer and closer to Alec’s, and started to come back together in different shapes.

Wasn’t when Magnus was shaken and vulnerable the best time for this? He wasn’t taking advantage. Magnus was asking for comfort. Alec wasn’t usually the person that people sought out for comfort, but he could do this. He could move into Magnus’s body. He could whisper “okay,” when Magnus’s hands moved back to his belt, he could kiss Magnus as they both worked their way out of their clothes.

Magnus straddled Alec’s thighs, set his hand to Alec’s shoulder and pressed him back against the raised side of the cot. Alec let him and brought his own hands to the tops of Magnus’s thighs as Magnus reached between them and took Alec’s cock in his hand. After a moment or two, he brought his own hand between Magnus’s legs.

It was different this time. The pressure Alec had been putting himself under, the pressure to perform, to do this right was gone. He didn’t need to wow Magnus or someone live up to any of Magnus’s older, more adventurous, more experienced lovers. He just had to be here.

They just had to be together.

Alec nearly laughed at the fact that it had taken a battleship breaking in half with all of them on it for him to realize that, but Magnus changed something that he was doing with his hand and Alec stopped thinking at all. He pushed up to kiss Magnus, but he couldn’t quite reach and the angle was wrong. His lips crashed against Magnus’s neck.

Magnus made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a moan and every last bit of Alec’s focus drilled down on finding a way to get him to make the sound again.

He was so focused that he didn’t hear the door opening or the sound of a few clicks of heels against the tile.

But he’d been programmed from a very young age to respond to that voice barking his name.

“Alec!”

Alec thought his mother had been livid at the wedding. And she probably had been. But this was livid at a whole new level. She stared at him, open-mouthed, before looking up at the ceiling, away from the sight of a warlock she hated defiling her firstborn.

The shock of his mother finding him fooling around with Magnus took a moment to wear off. A moment that, as it passed, felt like the single longest, most naked moment that had ever passed, anywhere in the world.

Finally, Magnus moved off of him and snapped his fingers. Nothing happened.

“I uh…” Magnus said. “Seem to be low on magic.”

Maryse scoffed, turned, and stormed out the door.

“Shit,” Alec huffed. He grabbed his boxers and pants off the floor and started pulling them on as quickly as he could. “Where’s my shirt?”

Magnus fumbled through the bedclothes looking for it, then hopped off the bed and looked over the floor. “I’m sorry, it’s dark in here, I don’t see it.”

“Fuck. Whatever,” Alec said, marching toward the door.

“You’re going after her?” Magnus demanded.

“And then I’m coming right back,” Alec answered as he walked into the hallway.

His mother hadn’t made it that far, he caught up with her after the hallway turn and stopped. He didn’t know what he’d planned to say to her when he caught up to her. He wasn’t even sure how he felt. Part of him wanted to apologize, part of him wanted to hear her say that it was okay, and part of him just wanted to rage and rage and rage at her for the ways she’d been acting for the last few weeks. Everything she’d said about his “little breakdown” and “stupid rebellion” and everything else she’d called it.

Of course, it didn’t matter what he wanted to say, because she spoke first.

“Half the Clave is here,” she growled.

“Half the clave saw me kiss him at the wedding,” Alec snapped. “What were you even doing going into his room when you knew he was sick?”

“It didn’t stop you,” she said coldly.

“I’m sorry that you walked in on that, believe me, but you can’t keep throwing a fit every time you are confronted with the reality that _I am dating him_ and _I am gay._ ”

“Alec—“

“And you can’t keep acting like people don’t know. They know. Everyone knows. It’s not a secret anymore. Okay? I know that because I think about it all the time because I kept it a secret for eleven years and now I wake up every fucking morning and have to remind myself that I don’t have to lie about it anymore. Okay? Izzy asks me how my night was and I don’t have to lie to her. Lydia asks me where I’m going after I’m off duty and I don’t have to lie to her. Clary asks me to run something past Magnus and I don’t have to have an existential meltdown first. I don’t want to just keep lying to you, but you are making me.”

For the first time during any discussion of Magnus, his mother was quiet. And not angry, seething quiet. Confused quiet. Unsure of what to say quiet.

For a little while at least. “Eleven years ago, you were ten. Ten-year-olds can’t be—“

“Yeah,” Alec cut her off. “They can.”

“What could possibly have happened to you at ten—“

“Nothing happened to me. I’m just like this. I’ve always just been like this. And I’ve been hiding it to make you happy, and make the Clave happy and make everyone but me happy. And I’m done. Cause Magnus—” Alec flung a hand backward, indicating the hallway he’d just jogged down, “— makes me happy.”

“Jace,” his mother said, quietly. “Jace was sent to us when you were ten.”

“It had nothing to do with Jace,” Alec lied with a cold shiver down his spine.

It had everything to do with Jace, but not in way he’d let himself think about until recently. And, looking over back over those memories he’d locked up so tightly, he’d been surprised at how much more innocent they were than he’d always remembered them being. Jace had adored him, Alec had been touched by the affection, let it become important to him, and when puberty hit Alec had… blown Jace’s affection a little out of proportion and let things get confusing. And maybe sometime soon he’d be able to talk to Magnus, and even Jace about it.

But if his mother couldn’t even listen to the broad stroke truths he was trying to tell her, he wasn’t going to try nuances.

“I remember when we took him in, the way you—“

“This isn’t about Jace,” Alec cut her off again. “This is about Magnus. He nearly died risking his neck for all of us tonight. So I don’t want to hear about how he can’t be trusted, or how he’s just trying to get the Clave’s money away from us anymore. And he’s the High Warlock of Brooklyn, so you should show him some respect as an important ally. And he’s,” Alec sucked in a breath, and wondered for a moment if he should even bother telling her about this, when he had no reason to believe she wouldn’t just use it to demote him again. “And he’s a big part of the reason that I’m not trapped in an unhappy marriage with Lydia, and starting to think about how easy it would be to just let myself miss a shot and let a demon take me down some night out on patrol.”

Maryse was quiet again, wide-eyed, and finally, finally listening.

“Magnus isn’t going anywhere.” Alec leaned over his mother, suddenly uncomfortably aware of how shirtless he still was. “Get the fuck over it.”

He left her there in the hallway, and stomped back to Lydia’s office, just in time to see Lydia herself walking out of the office door, looking a little dazed.

“Lydia?”

She looked up at him, and her expression became a little more focused and a lot more affectionately exasperated.

“I ducked into my office for some forms. I don’t know why I _didn’t_ expect Magnus to be naked in it. Silly me.”

“Lydia, I’m—“

She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. After a battle like the one we just had? I’d do him myself if you didn’t already have dibs.” She sighed. “I might need to start dating again. At least give it a shot?”

“Oh. Uh. Yeah. You… uh. You should.”

“Nothing makes you feel lonely like nearly dying.” Lydia arranged the forms in her arms. “Just don’t have sex on my desk.”

She walked away before Alec could reply that the mood was pretty much dead for the second time that night and he was losing faith he was ever going to have sex anywhere.


	6. Chapter 6

“Well. Mom hasn’t said anything to me since that night,” Alec sighed, dropping down on bed and tucking his phone between his ear and his shoulder so he could untie his shoes. “But she bumped Izzy and I into her afternoon reporting group with Jace.”

 

“That’s … almost friendly” Magnus replied, skeptically.

 

“Right.” Alec kicked off his sweaty shoes with a sigh.

 

“What are you doing now?”

 

“I’m just getting out of training with Jace.”

 

“Mmm.”

 

“What?”

 

“I’m just imagining you sweaty and flushed.”

 

Alec laughed. “I have tonight off. You um… wouldn’t have to imagine.” 

 

A enjoyable thrill ran down his spine as he said it. He felt hot and scandalous. They were new feelings. Finally figuring out that he didn’t have to impress Magnus in bed had been almost as freeing as kissing him at the wedding. It was a last little wall fallen. One more thing he didn’t have to pretend to be. 

 

“Tonight off and nowhere to be in the morning?” Magnus asked. “That sounds promising.”

 

“Do you want to get dinner or something?” Alec suggested. 

 

“Maybe after,” Magnus responded. 

 

“Aft—“ Alec started then realized. “Oh. Right. After would work for me.” 

 

“Can you be at my place at 7:00?”

 

“It’s a date.”

 

**

 

It was almost a date. Magnus called Alec at 6:30 apologizing and apologizing about something that had gone wrong. 

 

“I don’t want to cancel, I don’t know how long this will take either… why don’t you come to the club?” Magnus finally suggested. 

 

“The club?” Alec asked. 

 

“Pandemonium. I’m the owner, which is getting more inconvenient by the decade,” Magnus huffed. “There’s a bit of a… political situation happening right now. Nothing to worry about in the long run, but… something that could certainly put a damper on our night.”

 

“I thought Shadowhunters weren’t really allowed in Pandemonium,” Alec replied, deciding not to delve any further into a political downworlder issue right now.He was looking at himself in the mirror while they talked, trying to convince himself that he looked ready for a date. He’d combed his hair differently. Well… Izzy had combed his hair differently. It was parted on the side and combed down. 

 

And there was The Outfit. 

 

After a lot of whining and insisting on her part, he’d finally let Isabelle take him shopping for date clothes. He was now the somewhat unconvinced owner of a light blue button down shirt with a strange half collar, a pair of jeans that were not black, and a brown belt that matched his brown shoes. Isabelle had been very clear about all of these things being worn together in one complete package. It was An Outfit. The way she said it you could hear the capitals. 

 

There was a blazer too, but it made him look… weird. He didn’t think he was ready for the blazer. 

 

“Shadowhunters are allowed in Pandemonium,” Magnus said. “Shadowhunters just aren’t allowed to harass or harm downworlders in Pandemonium. Which, admittedly, is most of the reason they seem to come.”

 

“Okay,” Alec said. “What am I going to do while you’re working at the club?”

 

“Have a drink on the house?” Magnus suggested. “I really don’t think this will take long. If it sounds like it is going to suck up too much of the night I’ll portal you back to the Institute. And I promise I will make this up to you. ”

 

Alec’s first instinct was to say no. Why should he go all the way to Pandemonium when he might just end up having a drink he didn’t particularly want, and seeing Magnus briefly just to get shipped back home?

 

On the other hand, he didn’t have anything else planned for the night. 

 

And there was The Outfit to consider. 

 

Clothes weren’t Alec’s thing. He wore black because it was functional. It didn’t stain or clash. It hid ichor and sweat and blood. And he could do all of his laundry in one big load at the end of every week. He knew that Magnus’s interest in fashion and makeup and clothes didn’t extend to him, that Magnus didn’t care what Alec wore.

 

But Alec had been thinking about the way Magnus had looked in that tee shirt and jeans ever since the battle. It was most of the reason he’d let Isabelle take him shopping, and endured her teasing him. He wanted to give Magnus that same sort of jolt. He wanted Magnus to look at him and think “He looks so hot.”

 

Maybe it would be worth it to go down to Pandemonium, just so Magnus could see him like this. He was already wearing The Outfit. It seemed silly to take it off just to get dressed again if Magnus did call. 

 

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll meet you at Pandemonium.”

 

“Perfect. Text me when you get here and just give the bartender your name. I’m so sorry about this.”

 

“It’s fine, Magnus,” Alec assured him. “I’ll see you soon.”

 

Alec looked at himself in the mirror again as they hung up, and decided to try on the blazer one more time. 

 

***

 

It hadn’t occurred to Alec that people other than Magnus would noticed how he looked. Not that it really mattered. There was no secret passageway between his bedroom and the front door of the Institute. The only way he could have avoided the strange ripple of quiet and staring that moved out through the Control Room would have been to wear his regular clothes to the door and somehow change into his Outfit between the Institute and Pandemonium, which would have been insane. 

 

Besides, most people were returning to their work already. 

 

Alec decided to just keep moving. He spotted Izzy, and was surprised to see the absolutely murderous expression on her face as she looked at the two Shadowhunters standing across from her, whispering to each other.  Alec turned his focus inward. He wasn’t going to walk faster or slower than normal. He wasn’t going to look like he was noticing or being affected by any of this.

 

“Sorry, I really need you for a minute.” Lydia appeared in his field of vision, speaking a little too loudly in her harsh ‘all business’ voice. “I’ll walk with you.”

 

“Uh, sure.”

 

Lydia dove into some details about a mission going on later that night as the two of them passed out of the Control Room and into the front Hall. Alec was only partly listening. He wasn’t going on the mission, if it was that important he would catch up on it at his afternoon briefing tomorrow. 

 

“Unfortunately, we’ve had to call in a few… irregulars for tonight’s mission, but at least it’s unlikely any of them will get hurt,” She finished with a sigh as she and Alec reached the front door and finally paused. She looked up at him with a fond smile.

 

“Okay… so do you need me to do anything about this? Cause I have plans.”

 

Lydia’s eyebrows rose up her forehead, then came back down as her smile became more ruefully fond. “No, Alec, I was just helping you get out of that awkward mess back there. You know. With the staring.”

 

Affection for her bloomed in Alec’s chest. “Right? What the hell was that?”

 

“You just…” Lydia reached out and took his elbow in her palm. “You’re obviously dressed for a date. People are going to talk a little bit.”

 

Alec rolled his eyes. “Other people date. Other people get dressed up for missions. You should see the get-ups Izzy goes demon hunting in when she’s the bait.” 

 

Lydia nodded. “Right, but everyone knows who you’re dating and it’s still…”

 

“Weird.”

 

“ _New_ ,” Lydia corrected. “It’ll be okay. We’re all here for you— me and Jace and Izzy, and there’ll be more and more people everyday.” She let his arm go. “Now, go have fun. No one will call you. No one will text you. No SOS’s, no one anywhere near Magnus’s. If the apocalypse seems nigh, we’ll call you in the morning.”

 

Unsure of how to thank her, Alec just smiled at her. She grinned back and, as never happened to Alec, the right words just came to him. 

 

“I’m so glad I didn’t marry you.”

 

“Ouch,” Lydia laughed. “Go. Have a good time.”

 

With another grin, Lydia turned and walked back to the Control Room. Alec watched her go, taking a deep breath. He didn’t want to feel like he was running away from the Institute, he needed to stand here for a second. 

 

A second too long, as it turned out. 

 

Lydia’s heels clicking as she walked away masked the sound of another pair walking into the front hall. Alec heard the difference a moment too late, and found himself, for the first time since the night after the battle, face to face with his mother. 

 

Her jaw dropped as she scanned him up and down. 

 

Alec couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t make a confrontation with this woman about the same damn thing a weekly event. He turned around and grabbed the door handle.

 

“Alec, wait,” his mother called. 

 

Alec pulled the door open and stepped through it, but his rebellious streak ran out of juice before it propelled him completely out the door.  He turned back to face her. “What?”

 

She clamped her mouth shut. Even across the front hall, Alec could see the muscles in her jaw working. 

 

“You look nice in blue,” she managed. She said it like it had been tortured out of her, with tears in her eyes, but she’d said it. 

 

It wasn’t much. 

 

It wasn’t nothing. 

 

“Thank you,” Alec said as he stepped out of the door. 

 

**

 

Magnus, it turned out, had not just set up a tab for Alec, but had given the bartender a suggestion for the first thing to serve Alec. It was so goddamn loud in the club that Alec hadn’t heard the name of the drink. It was brown with a mushed up cherry at the bottom. Sweet, but not too sweet. 

 

Alec had never been in Pandemonium while not in active pursuit of a demon. It was weird. 

 

For one thing, there was nothing to do but sit at the bar and play with his phone while he waited for Magnus to finish up with something he had just texted to promise would only take a few more minutes. For another, he would have fit in a lot better wearing his normal clothes. Everyone around him was wearing black and black leather, though considerably less of it than he usually wore. At least he had decided against the blazer again at the last minute. He was already attracting enough attention in his button up and jeans. A broad-shouldered Seelie with white hair ending in electric pink tips was blatantly watching Alec from one of the high top tables. 

 

Strangely nervous as he waited for Magnus to come find him, Alec was drinking too fast. He tipped back the last of his drink, and the bartender was at the ready with a new one, this one the same crisp, light blue drink Magnus usually made him at the loft. Across the floor the Seelie smiled at him and managed to convey with a tilt of his head and a look in his eye that Alec should come join him. 

 

 _Oh_ , Alec thought to himself as he realized what was happening. The Seelie was _flirting_ with him. It was a strange thing to realize, here and now. It had happened to him before. People flirted with him when he wasn’t glamoured. Mostly women, but not always. It was strange to recognize it without words, and to not have to care about it. He didn’t have to worry about this guy having figured it out, because he wasn’t hiding anymore. He didn’t have to do anything about it, because he was here to see someone else. His boyfriend. Alec turned his gaze back out to the floor, hoping that the gentle rejection would be the end of that interaction. 

 

A motion in the crowd caught his eye. He wasn’t sure how he knew it was Magnus, but he knew. Dancers parted to let him through. He looked gorgeous in a somewhat shiny shirt dripping with necklaces and a pair of tight pants. Alec smiled at him. Magnus stared back. 

 

After a moment, he shook his head and continued toward Alec. The moment he reached Alec he flung out his hand. 

 

“Come with me,” he shouted over the music. Alec took his hand and followed where Magnus lead. Through the throng of pulsing bodies, then down a long, dark, nearly quiet hallway. 

 

“Look at you,” Magnus murmured as they turned a corner into an abandoned stretch of hallway. He stepped back from Alec, fingers sliding slowly out of Alec’s hand. “ _Look_ at you,” he repeated. 

 

Alec smiled as he felt the blush rising in his cheeks. This was exactly what he’d wanted, but it was a weird, embarrassing rush to actually get it. 

 

“Did you get your problem fixed?” Alec asked, as Magnus continued to stare a him. 

 

“What problem?”

 

“Magnus.”

 

Magnus shook himself. “Right.  The problem. The problem is in progress.  But there is a… pause in the action right now. For about two hours. So… I have those hours to spend with you, if you’d like. I doubt the club atmosphere is appealing to you, but there is a very nice Italian place around the corner.”

 

Alec bit his lip. That wasn’t exactly the evening he’d been imagining. Or the one Magnus had promised him, though it sounded… nice enough. Maybe it was the drinks, maybe it was the way Magnus was looking at him. He didn’t need “nice enough” tonight. 

 

“ _After_ ,” he said quietly, watching Magnus’s face to see how he reacted. “You promised me dinner _after_.”

 

Magnus licked his lips. His calm expression began to lose some of its reserve. “That is true.”

 

“Could we portal to your place?” Alec wondered if he was pushing too hard. There was free and there was reckless. He felt a little like he was toeing the line between the two. 

 

“That uh…I have a feeling that is going to lead to another interruption if we try it tonight. You are the pleasant oasis in an otherwise obnoxious evening,” Magnus said. He looked Alec over again, with something like longing in his eyes.  “I do have an idea.”

 

“What is it?”

 

Magnus answered by extending his hand again, and Alec allowed himself to be guided the rest of the way down the hallway, around a corner and halfway down another hallway. They stopped in front of a large, black door with an ornately carved frame all around it. There was no knob. Only the frame made it look like a door, instead of a differently colored patch of wall. Magnus turned his back to Alec and did something Alec didn’t see. The door disappeared, and Magnus pulled Alec into a room that became pitch black as the door zapped back into existence. 

 

Alec heard Magnus snap his fingers, and the room filled with light, one candle at a time, revealing a room that was much more strange than it was romantic. 

 

There were several large, black leather couches and chaises, and a few random, purple velvet curtains, hanging at odd points in the middle of the ceiling. Alec looked up and saw that there were tracks on the ceiling. The curtains could be pulled around to form differently around the furniture so that individual pieces, or small groups could be cordoned off for privacy.  

 

The whole place was dim and shadowed. Like its occupants weren’t supposed to see what each other were… 

 

“Magnus— is this room the very illegal thing I think it is?” Alec asked. 

 

“No,” Magnus answered. “Everything at Pandemonium is completely within the bounds of the accords.”

 

“So this is _not_ a place for vampires to drink Mundanes?”

 

“It is not against the Accords for vampires to drink from willing participants,” Magnus replied. “And we usually have someone at the door checking to make sure that no one coming in this room has been entranced. But it doesn’t usually open for another hour, and I’ve marked it occupied while we’re in here.”

 

Alec bit his lip. He felt like he should insist on somewhere nicer. Somewhere not usually used for something disgusting. But also… he didn’t feel like this particular threshold— just fooling around— needed to be a huge production. There were other things, he thought he might want that for, but not this. He just wanted this to _finally happen._

 

“It is thoroughly cleaned every night,” Magnus assured him.

 

Alec breathed. There was a certain… lemony quality to the air. 

 

“I know how you feel about vampires. There’s a storage closet a little further down the hall if you’d prefer.”

 

It was a challenge rather than a genuine offer, and Alec figured he had that coming after everything he’d said about vampires recently. He held in a sigh. He didn’t love the idea of doing this in blood suck central, but it was better than trying to do it on a shelf full of glass cleaner, and infinitely better than going back home untouched. 

 

“Alright,” Alec said. “As long as you promise your magical Do Not Disturb is the real deal.”

 

“Absolutely,” Magnus said. “It takes a bit of magic to get through when you’re not a vampire, and no vampire in this city is stupid enough to just walk into a door I’ve made closed.”

 

Alec started to unbutton his shirt. “All right. Then this’ll work.”

 

“What are you doing?” Magnus asked, a little bit of a laugh under his words.

 

Alec gestured at his buttons. “What do you think I’m doing?”

 

“Come here.” Magnus held out his arms, and Alec smiled and walked between them. Magnus turned them both, and pressed Alec backward and down, so that he was perched on the back of the nearest couch, just low enough that he had to tilt his head up to kiss Magnus. 

 

“You,” Magnus growled as he picked up where Alec had left off unbuttoning his shirt. “Are so fucking hot right now.”

 

Alec laughed and leaned back into the kiss. 

 

He was standing in a seedy, and despite what Magnus said, totally illegal backroom of a club he never wanted to be in socially, with the High Warlock of Brooklyn undressing him while most of the rest of the Institute worked. 

 

And he felt relaxed. 

 

The rebellious undercurrent of the first few times, and the performance anxiety of the last few times after that, was gone now. He felt keyed up, but not nervous as Magnus finished unbuttoning his shirt and pushed it back off of his shoulders. He brought his hands to Alec’s belt and undid that, then Alec’s fly.

 

“And do you know what the hottest fucking thing about you is?” Magnus asked, going directly into the answer without pausing. “That you know exactly how fucking hot you are.”

 

Alec laughed and Magnus stepped back, undoing his own belt. He gave Alec a flirty and salacious grin, then indicated a chaise lounge next to him as though it was an expensive and rare gift. 

 

Alec rolled his eyes, but walked to the chaise, and lowered himself onto it while Magnus continued to undress. He wondered if there was a point where the awe wore off. If there was going to be a time where he could actually look away from Magnus undressing. Maybe there would be. But it wasn’t tonight. Alec pulled his own pants off, and tossed them back toward the couch where he’d left his shirt. 

 

“Come here,” he said, the same way Magnus had before. 

 

It was more fun this time than it had been before, Alec realized. They were laughing and smiling as they touched each other. Everything felt light and easy as Magnus came to the couch, pressed himself down on top of Ale. Took Alec’s cock in his hand.

 

“Whoa!”

 

So of course it couldn’t stay that way. 

 

Alec jumped at the voice. His hand fell away from Magnus’s cock and he pulled back from the kiss. Above him, Magnus looked shocked more than anything. 

 

“Who the fuck—“ Magnus demanded as they both looked toward the door to see who had broken through the enchantment.

 

The surprise of seeing Clary’s vampire friend standing in the doorway wore off in seconds. _Of course_ , Alec thought. The one vampire in the city stupid enough to ignore Magnus’s enchanted door, and probably one of the “irregulars” Lydia had mentioned earlier. She’d said they were unlikely to get hurt on tonight’s mission. Alec begged to differ.

 

“Sorry, guys, I was looking for—“

 

“No one cares, Simon,” Alec barked. 

 

“Yeah, fuck off, Simon,” Magnus added.

 

Simon, miraculously, listened. He gave them both a thumbs up, turned, and left through the enchanted door which shimmered back into existence behind him.

 

Magnus growled in frustration.  “I’m sorry, that has never— “

 

Alec pulled him back down into a kiss before he could finish. “Come on,” he huffed. “Before anyone else comes by.”

 

If Alec’s insistence surprised Magnus, he got over it fast. He dove back into the kiss and slipped his hand back between them. It only took a moment of the resumed touch for Alec to bring all of his focus back to the warmth of Magnus’s skin and the sharp sounds of Magnus’s breathing. They’d waited long enough. They’d earned this. Alec wrapped his hand back around Magnus. They were both going to come tonight if they had to do it in front of the the New York Wolfpack, the New York Vampire Clan, and the entire fucking Clave.

 

Thankfully, it didn’t take a huge audience, just the feeling of Magnus’s lips on his neck. Alec felt his entire body go tight, and then the rising tide of pleasure crash over him again and again. Magnus kissed his face while he recovered, letting him breathe and come down. 

 

“Oh,” Alec managed, as he finally caught his breath. Then, as an afterthought. “Wow.”

 

Magnus laughed and kissed him again. Alec wrapped his hands around Magnus’s broad shoulders, holding him close for a moment before letting his hands drift back down Magnus’s body. Touching Magnus had seemed easy before, but now it felt instinctual. Alec watched Magnus’s face in wonder, knowing that every blissful expression moving across Magnus’s features was because of him. 

 

The sound Magnus made when he came (all over Alec’s stomach, which Alec hadn’t expected to find nearly as exciting as he did) nearly made Alec ready to go again, but when Magnus dropped down against him, that reforming edge disappeared again. Everything felt suddenly peaceful and quiet. 

 

Alec wrapped his arms around Magnus’s back. Magnus pressed a small kiss to Alec’s neck.  

 

“Do you have to go?” Alec asked.

 

“No,” Magnus replied. “Not yet. Let’s stay like this for a little while.”

 

“Okay.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you like my stories, please follow me on Tumblr. I post a bunch of Shadowhunters stuff and its the best place to keep up with my new stories, plus some podcast and podfic stuff I'm working on!
> 
> http://oncethrown.tumblr.com


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